


By Coincidence

by Chimerical1975



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, First Time, Humor, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:53:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28973133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chimerical1975/pseuds/Chimerical1975
Summary: SUMMARY: Set 1995, following End Game.  As Mulder recovers from his brush with death, across town, Scully uncovers a moment from his past. Is it just coincidence that draws Mulder and Scully to the same place at the same time on a lazy Sunday – or it fate lending a hand? Either way, you just never know where the day might take you. This is really an in-depth character study, with angst, humor, love, pain, and the whole damn thing...Oh, and generous helping of smut.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	By Coincidence

**Author's Note:**

> Chimerical1975@gmail.com  
> Originally Published: January, 1998  
> The X-Files, its characters and situations are the property of 1013 Productions and Fox Broadcasting.  
> Comments, questions, discussion, and criticisms always welcome.

**Sunday, February 19, 1995**

**Mulder's Apartment**

**11:30 am**

Oh God, he just hated Sundays, Mulder thought as he reluctantly opened his eyes and tried to focus in on what he'd heard, his body tense and on alert as he tried to identify the sound that had broken apart his blessedly dreamless sleep.

As usual he'd fallen asleep on his couch the night before, or rather, early that morning as it'd been just after 4am the last time he'd glanced at the clock before sleep had finally overtaken him. Now, he gazed languidly about his living room, blinking a few times as he mentally pushed his way further up into consciousness. Then the sound came again; it was just a dog barking out on the street somewhere.

With a deep groan, he sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head. Mulder was not a morning person. He rolled his head slowly to loosen the stiffened muscles in his neck and shoulders then stretched his arms out as far as he could reach, trying to loosen the kinks in his back as he yawned deeply and loudly. Worn out from his exertion, Mulder flopped back into the couch and focused in on the clock on the side table. He was somewhat pleased to discover that he'd managed to sleep away the greater portion of the morning. This was good, less Sunday to have to struggle through.

From his sprawled position, Mulder looked slowly about his place. It was stuffy in the small room and the gray morning light from the overcast sky only added to the dreariness causing him to feel claustrophobic and a bit depressed even. Occasionally, he was struck by the fact that his place sometimes felt strange to him, as though he didn't actually live there. It was like a dorm room without any of the fun that usually went with the mess. It wasn't like Scully's place which felt like a home, like a human being made a life there.

He turned his face towards the window and squinted out at the dull sky. He felt that that since he was awake, he really should get up and do something with his day. But of course, one of the reasons Mulder hated Sundays was that they were filled with the necessary chores of everyday living. Boring things like laundry, picking up dry cleaning, restocking his food supply, clearing a path so he could at least move about his apartment without danger of crashing into something and breaking his little toe--again. However, truth be told, the real reason he didn't care for Sundays was because Scully wasn't around and he was alone. Somewhere along the way over the last two years, he'd become so accustomed to her presence in and about his life. Saturdays weren't so bad, but as the weekend stretched along, Sundays started to become interminable because of the separation from her.

Sixty-four hours. He'd pathetically counted it up once and 5pm Friday to 9am Monday amounted to sixty-four hours. True, he and Scully rarely worked anything that even slightly resembled regular office hours. But when not in the field on a case their schedule was like that of any other civil servant. In the past, he'd often been able to turn Sunday in to a working day too and he liked that much better. If nothing else, the American taxpayer certainly got their money's worth on Fox Mulder's salary.

However, he'd had many Sundays free since the end of last year. Scully had almost died when she'd been unceremoniously returned from where ever she'd been held for three months. Her body had undergone serious trauma with strange, unnatural changes to her blood and organic structures. Her recovery to full strength had not happened as quickly as she would have liked. She'd come back to work full time much earlier than she should have and paid the price with a slight relapse in exhaustion just before Christmas. After that, Skinner, in collusion with Mulder, had lightened their workload for a short time in order to force Scully to take time to recover. It'd worked too; she was completely back to her old self. Or rather, she was as completely back as one could expect considering that she still couldn't account for three months of her life.

But nonetheless, she'd forged ahead in her inimitable Scully-way.

Mulder had been irritated with, although not surprised by, Scully's insistence on pushing herself and returning to a full caseload. Jesus, she was a doctor--had she worked with only corpses for so long that she'd forgotten that it takes time for the living to heal and regenerate? As much as he loved her, the fact remained that, on occasion, Scully also just irritated the ever-loving shit out of him. But in a good way, he was quick to append mentally. Her determination and independence were two of the things he admired most in her and yet, if he was honest, they were also the same things that, at times, exasperated him to the point of beating his head on the wall. All he'd wanted was for her to be completely well. He had things to tell her.

Of course, tracking him down to the frozen wastelands at the top of the world probably hadn't done much for her stamina. He'd deliberately left her behind for a variety of reasons, some selfish, some not. But Scully wouldn't be dismissed so easily. And Mulder was left torn between feeling grateful that she'd followed him, for there wasn't a doubt in his mind that he'd be dead otherwise, and feeling angry and guilty that she'd taken such a chance because of him.

So, over the last two weeks, he'd been the one who'd needed time to recover. The retrovirus that would have killed him except for Scully's intervention had raged through his body, forcing him into the idle time he hated. Although the last series of blood work had shown that Scully's prescribed course of antivirals had eradicated the virus, he was still weak and Mulder hated feeling weak--hated it worse than almost anything in the world. He'd refused to give into it, pushing himself and Scully had nagged at him daily to rest more, just as he'd done to her.

The irony was not lost on him--they were indeed, an oddly matched set. God, what other sane person would have either one of them he thought, smiling slightly, and shaking his head.

Mulder stood up slowly and made his way to the bathroom. He started the shower as he peeled off his sweaty T-shirt and the boxers stained from last night's little adventure with his video collection, a crude reminder of the inferior satisfaction he would turn to when the tension and aloneness would overwhelm him. He wondered absently if he would ever have sex again with anything except his right hand or perhaps his left when he was feeling kinky.

That thought naturally brought his mind back to Scully and his brain went all foggy again as he wondered about what she did to relieve her tension. He rather liked the picture that appeared in his mind. But then again, maybe she didn't do anything; maybe she was just storing it all up. Maybe she was just going to explode on her 35th birthday.

He opened the bathroom windows hoping the fresh chilled air would help. Stepping into the shower, he let the hot, steaming water pour down over his aching back muscles for a very long time, finally feeling them loosen up slightly. He washed his hair then began to soap down his body, standing under the pulsating flow. A shower was one of the great inventions of humanity. Now if only Scully were here to enjoy this with him.

He closed his eyes against the warm water flowing down over his head and shoulders as he hauled out a now-familiar fantasy. As his hands moved slowly over his body, gliding through the thick lather, his imagination changed them to Scully's hands, soothing his skin and stirring his blood, touching him everywhere he wanted, stroking softly and then firmly, as the steamy water coursed over his body. He'd gotten so good at the indulging this daydream, that he would swear that if he leaned back just slightly, he would feel her body pressed into his back as her hands moved around to touch him.

Suddenly, the hot water began to fade to be replaced quickly with cold, which was just as well given the direction his thoughts had been taking. Mulder slowly opened his eyes, abandoning the story in his head as he stood under the cooling water, cooling down himself, then finished rinsing off quickly. As he stepped out of the shower, he shook his head like a dog, just beginning to feel human again. He shivered slightly because now of course, he was chilled from the open window and the cool water.

Mulder wrapped himself in the seldom-used thick terry robe that hung on the back of the door--a birthday gift from his mother a few months ago. Granted, the robe had been delivered by UPS the day after his birthday and accompanying card that said, "Best Wishes on your special day," had had a printed signature, but hey, at least she'd remembered. But somehow though, he was also very sure that the kid who delivered his mother's newspaper probably got the same card on his birthday too. Although, he supposed that Mom's personal shopper had picked out a more appropriate gift for a 13-year-old.

Mulder wiped the steam off the mirror and stared at his 34-year-old face. The dark bruising around his eyes from the retrovirus had faded, but the reflection that stared back at him still looked tired and a bit older than his actual age. After a moment's debate, he decided to forgo shaving, opting instead to put his full effort into brushing his teeth. He styled his wet hair by running a hand through it and contemplated a nose job for about 3 seconds. Finally, he padded back into the living room and resumed his spot on the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table, exhausted from his efforts of doing almost nothing. He glanced over at the clock again. Wow--he'd managed to kill 40 whole minutes. Now what?

He surveyed his domain again with a certain dismay. The apartment-cleaning fairy had not made an appearance while he was in the shower. I should get a house cleaner, he thought before he rejected the idea immediately. No way; He had way too much stuff to get into and mess with. Mulder hated people messing with his stuff.

Scully had tried to mess with his stuff once, he remembered. Just after she'd been assigned to the X-Files, she'd offered to help him organize. He'd looked at her with complete horror and assured her that he knew exactly where everything was. It was a lie of course; he knew it, and she knew it. But the offer had come very, very early in their relationship and the truth was he hadn't trusted her then. Of course, he thought affectionately, now that he trusted her with life, heart and soul, the little bitch hadn't volunteered again. He'd blown that one big time.

Mulder sighed and looked in the general direction of the kitchen. There was coffee in there--it was calling out to him. The only problem was that getting it from the kitchen to the couch would require some movement on his part. What was the deal with that, he thought resentfully, not yet ready to stir from his spot.

He wasted a few more minutes contemplating his feet and toes a bit. Why was it that some people's second toe was longer than their big toe, he wondered. That didn't make any sense and while he was at it, who came up with the word "toe" any way? It was one of those words that when said repeatedly in one's mind, as Mulder was unfortunately doing right that moment, it became completely non-sensible. He'd ask Scully her medical opinion about toe length on Monday, if only to see the look on her face. He just loved to do that. In fact, tweaking her was one of his few joys.

Now he closed his eyes and hauled out his other fantasy--the living room one. Truth was that Mulder had a rather large repertoire of fantasies. One for every room in his apartment, along with the hallway, the elevator, his car, and that dark area in the very back of his office. But he liked his living room one. In this one, Scully was curled up on this couch, wearing his robe and fresh from her shower with her hair damp and her body sweet-smelling. She'd sit at that end over there and put her feet over in his lap so he could massage them. He thought about the deliciousness of tickling her slightly and getting that smile back and maybe a laugh as she wiggled her toes. He suddenly wondered if she giggled. God, he didn't even know if Scully would giggle given the right circumstance. Shouldn't he know that about her? There seemed to be a lot of things he didn't know about her.

But one of her secrets that he did know was that she painted her toenails, he'd seen her naked feet on several occasions when they'd changed shoes after slogging through the mud somewhere. He'd found that fact intriguing because she never painted her fingernails. He supposed that if he asked her why, she'd give him The Look or perhaps some sensible explanation having to do with the chemicals she worked with. But inside Mulder suspected that she just did the toes in some strange homage to femininity that she did to please herself and no one else. Mulder liked that. In fact, he liked that a lot. In fact, the thought was something of a turn-on. God, maybe someday she'd even let him paint her toenails--it was a weird little thing he had a desire to do, just as he'd had this equally crazy longing to brush that one errant strand of hair back off her face. Mulder thought about how he would hold her foot on his lap then bend down and suck Scully's big toe deep into his mouth as his hands moved up....

The resulting picture in his mind snapped his eyes back open and stirred him into action. Jesus, if he kept going, he was going to end up needing another shower he thought as he put his hands up to rub his temples as though to push away the thoughts. Coffee, this digression had all started with coffee. With some effort, he managed to unfold his bones to a standing position and gravitate towards the kitchen and his new coffeemaker. Another heart-felt gift from mom left on his doorstep by UPS; this time to mark Christmas. The printed card said, "Best Wishes on this Happy Holiday." Mom's printer was apparently very big on the Best Wishes thing. But hey, he bet that at least the paperboy hadn't gotten a coffeemaker for Christmas.

He dug through the cupboards. Shit, he was out of filters--he'd have to remember to buy some, yet another one of those mundane things he hated remembering. Making do with a paper towel, he dumped what seemed to be an appropriate amount of coffee in and set it to brewing.

Fox Mulder made truly shitty coffee. His fine, keen mind was able to hypothesize the most elusive of metaphysical concepts but for some damn reason the correct ratio of coffee to water just completely eluded him. When Scully was there and they were going over files together, he could often con her into doing it and it always tasted wonderful. On the other hand, he thought, maybe it was just the fact he was sharing it with her that made it wonderful. Maybe there was just the illusion that Scully's coffee was better than his was.

Mulder wandered to the front door to pick up the paper and then headed back to the couch to wait for the coffee to finish brewing. He read the comics and he wondered if poor Charlie Brown was ever going to nail that cute little red-headed girl who followed him about. Then he thumbed through the TV guide. Oh joy; they were re-running that God-awful alien autopsy special. Yet another reason to live, he thought sarcastically, echoing Scully's words spoken to him a few months back. Yet another reason for people to look at him as though he was insane.

Within a few minutes, the coffee was ready and he shuffled back to the kitchen where he rummaged around to find his last clean mug. He poured the coffee and then added the usual immense amounts of sugar and cream necessary to turn it into something he could stand to drink.

His stomach rumbled slightly so he stood in front of the open refrigerator a few minutes searching for something to eat--something that didn't look alien with green fuzz. After a moment, he settled on the two-day old leftover ravioli. He briefly considered popping it into the microwave, but then decided the hell with it and carried it along with the coffee back to the living room. He resumed his position on the couch and ate cold ravioli out of the Tupperware as he drank his too sweet coffee while he read the paper.

Wow, he thought acerbically, life just doesn't get any better than this. Scully just didn't know what she was missing. He wondered what she was doing right this moment. He wondered if he should tell her the things he wanted her to know so badly, or if he should just shut the hell up and leave it all be. He really didn't like having all this free time to think about all of that. He glanced over at the clock again. Another 20 minutes down.

God, he just hated Sundays.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Simon's Used Bookstore**

**Alexandria, Virginia.**

It was really by coincidence that Scully and her sister, Melissa, ended up in Simon's Used Bookstore.

They had gone for brunch at their favorite place in Old Town Alexandria. That part of the city was beautiful, with its historical brick buildings, quaint streets, and stores. In the last couple of months, she and Melissa had taken to meeting up on Sundays whenever they could, to catch up on sister talk and just spend some time together.

Since the day had turned very cold and dreary, they'd planned to take in a movie. However, they'd ended up talking for so long at brunch that they missed the start time and now had to kill a couple of hours. After leaving the restaurant, they wandered a bit, browsing in the stores when they happened upon the old store stuffed to the ceiling with old books, magazines, and newspapers. Melissa wanted to go in as the window sign promised a large New Age section.

Once inside, they each went their separate ways. Melissa watched fondly as Dana wandered over towards the science books, just feeling so very pleased that she was even there to share the day with her. Like many adult siblings, the sisters had drifted apart a bit since childhood. Not though argument or design, but simply by chance and laziness. But since Dana's return months before, Melissa stuck closer to her than she had in recent years. After months of absence, she'd given her sister up for dead. Then she'd almost lost her again when they had acquiesced to Dana's wish that her life not be maintained by artificial means.

Melissa was grateful that she'd been given a second chance to rebuild the closeness they'd once had and she wasn't going to waste it. Today had been so nice. During lunch, she'd teased Dana gently as she had when they were young and was pleased to see that somewhere in the ensuing years her little sister had learned to give back as good as she got. Dana had always had a sense of humor but few outside the family had ever seen it.

But other things were different too. Once unbending almost to a fault, she'd become less rigid in the last few years and more open. At brunch, Dana had listened to her as she'd talked about some of her spiritual beliefs without either giving her The Look or just outright dismissing them with a sound of derision, as she would have once. No, she wasn't going to see Dana at one of her spiritual gatherings anytime soon, but at least she was willing to look at other possibilities, she wasn't so closed off. In Melissa's mind she still had a way to go, but she gave her credit because she knew better than most why Dana didn't often let people near.

When they were young and moving from base to base with their parents, she'd made new friends easily, but it had been much harder for Dana. Fair or not, being very smart was often tough on a girl socially and somehow, Dana's confidence in her intellect was often mistaken for arrogance. Melissa knew her little sister was often passed by or left out, but she wasn't about to tell her to pretend to be less than she was in order to fit in. Sadly, by the time Dana made a friend or two who could appreciate her, it was often time to move on again and leave them behind. Their father didn't help matters. He was often a loving but tough taskmaster, rarely praising and often finding just the one little thing that he thought could have been done better. Somewhere along the line, Melissa just realized that it was useless and learned to let it all slide, but she saw that Dana struggled for his approval even harder. She never seemed to really realize that she was his favorite and if he was harder on Dana than the rest, it was because he thought the most of her.

But the result was that Dana had grown up far more serious and introspective than she had. She protected her feelings because she felt inadequate sometimes. That's why it was so nice to see her laugh and be happy now. Melissa could tell that she loved her work and she felt she'd finally found a place she belonged. There was no denying that Dana's years at the FBI had changed her for the better and Melissa was certain some of it was certainly due to that partner of hers.

Melissa often had insights that she couldn't explain any more than she could explain to Mulder just how she knew not to call him, "Fox." The minute Dana's handsome partner had walked into the ICU, she'd sensed that there was more going between Mulder and her sister than met the eye. She didn't suspect anything as boring or conventional as an office love affair. Rather, she sensed a deeper communion between them, something that was far rarer. She wasn't even sure if they understood it themselves. Mulder, for all his outlandish beliefs, certainly hadn't realized the power his heart held for her sister. When she'd come to him with the grim news that Dana was slipping away, his refusal to return to the hospital had infuriated her. Nevertheless, in the end, he'd given up on his futile earthly struggle for justice and had come to stay Dana in a kind of spiritual battle.

Melissa wasn't sure if she could attribute Dana's restoration to any one person, entity, or thing, nor was she even particularly interested in doing so. All she knew was that by the next morning, her sister's conscious mind had been restored to the body that had been useless without it. All she knew was that had happened after Fox Mulder had come to Dana that night. All she knew was that her sister was whole again and Melissa Scully did not believe in coincidence.

From where she sat, Melissa looked down the long aisle saw Dana looking through stacks of books. Her sister, feeling her glance, looked up and smiled a bit in return. Things were good now, Melissa thought.

Scully glanced briefly up at her sister who was now happily sitting on the floor next to a stack of books on crystals, astrology and other things that didn't fit into her ordered world. She wandered to the back of the large store where the medical books were stacked. As she squeezed down one aisle, she noticed that the store had a large section on UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. She half expected to see Mulder standing there pouring over some obscure reference with excitement in his hazel eyes because despite the many things they didn't share, one of the things they did was a love of books and learning. He didn't live too far from here so chances were good that he knew about this place, but in case he didn't, she'd have to remember to mention it to him on Monday.

Scully paused and looked through the stacks thinking maybe there was something she could pick out for him. She and Melissa could drop it off on the way home in fact, she thought. Would it be too strange to get a gift for no reason? Would it seem too obvious that she was looking for any excuse to see Mulder? Was it pathetic that she counted down the sixty-four hours of a weekend?

Scully sighed and shook her shook her head. Not a good idea, it was a pitiful pretext at best and anyway, she reasoned, she could be pretty certain that he already owned most of the books there no matter how outrageous or far-fetched. She glanced back up the far end of the aisle at her sister again.

Melissa was so like Mulder, she thought. In many ways they were far better suited to each other than she and Mulder were. Each of them had different, but nonetheless passionate beliefs in things that were often without the hard scientific proof she needed. In Melissa and Mulder's view of the world, two and two didn't necessarily need to add up to four. But it was so hard for Scully to make that same leap of faith--something in her just demanded that the addition work out right. She was willing to listen, even willing to suppose on occasion. However, she wasn't quite able to just openly believe, not yet anyway.

Scully moved on down the aisle. She'd forgotten how much she had loved these dusty, disordered places. A voracious reader during childhood and her high school years, she'd spent many afternoons wandering places such as this, looking for a special find or author. Later, during medical school when she'd hardly had the time to waste on sleep, let alone something as frivolous as pleasure reading, so she'd been forced to put such little joys aside. In those years, her main topics of reading were on the forensic sciences and chemistry. While those had certainly proved helpful as she now navigated the labyrinth of the amazing and unique ways that people managed to die, they did little to feed her soul.

During her first years at the FBI, she'd had little time for reading either. She'd concentrated on teaching and she'd had an active social life. It had been a fun time and her star was rising fast within in the bureau. But then came the X-Files assignment and by amazing coincidence, her private life took a dumper about the same time she was directed to watch over the investigations of one Special Agent Fox Mulder; Boy Genius and FBI loose cannon.

Scully hadn't been happy about the assignment and she definitely didn't view it as a promotion. Despite their assurances that it was all in the interest of scientific verification, the underlying tone had been very clear: discredit her partner; discredit the man.

She wasn't naïve; she was aware that all agents' actions were scrutinized due to the sensitive nature of their work, including her own. Nevertheless, while she hadn't known Fox Mulder except by reputation, she didn't like the idea of being assigned to spy on a fellow agent. It wasn't her style and certainly not why she'd joined the FBI.

She'd never understood why she'd been picked for the job. There were other individuals within the FBI with the scientific and medical backgrounds just as suited to the Official Version of the assignment. The answer that had made the most sense, of course, was that because she'd been so clearly ambitious they'd thought she could be manipulated. Perhaps they'd thought that in order to work her way up the FBI hierarchy she could be induced into delivering the Unofficial Version they really wanted.

And had Fox Mulder been a different kind of man, had he been what they claimed, that scenario might even have happened. However, the more she observed about her new partner, the less she was inclined to believe the rumor and innuendo she'd been carefully fed.

At the time, Scully had known that Mulder had, at one time anyway, all the makings of a brilliant career with the FBI. Entering Oxford at an early age, he'd graduated with highest honors before moving on to gain his Ph.D. in Psychology. After joining the FBI, he became a masterful and brilliant ISU profiler, whose insights into deranged minds had been the downfall of many brutal criminals. His move to the Violent Crimes Unit only brought more accomplishment. True--there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Mulder had skipped the class at Quantico on working and playing well with others. But his string of successes had, in the beginning anyway, made it easier for his superiors to overlook his eccentricities.

That was, until he'd discovered the X-Files. Once he'd encountered the long-neglected cases, Mulder's meteoric rise crashed back to the ground like a defective test rocket. By the time Scully was assigned to his entire investigation division of one, the FBI scuttlebutt was that the guy was completely off and he'd been without a partner for some time.

However, his obsessions were only a small part of the much bigger issue that Melissa had recently nicknamed, "The Mulder Problem" several months back. Scully had never put a name to it before, but the one Melissa had chosen fit just fine. Of course, Melissa seemed oblivious to the fact that she'd already been wrestling with the Mulder Problem almost daily for the last two years. That is when she wasn't busy wrestling with the possibility of giant flukeworms and liver-eating maniacs. Yes indeed, Mulder had opened a whole New World for her she thought ruefully.

But the Mulder Problem clung to her like a new puppy from the minute she'd put on her most confident air, walked into that basement office and laid eyes on Special Agent Fox William Mulder for the first time. He'd looked up at her, wearing those impossibly cute glasses with that great head of hair with that strand that flopped down on his forehead, begging to be touched. His beautiful, deep-set eyes had sized her up openly as he'd shaken her hand and he'd smiled. Of course, she didn't know at the time that was Mulder's sarcastic smile--the one he gave when he least felt it. It would be a while until she saw the genuine article and it would take her breath away when she did. But for now, all she could think was that this man was stunning. The attraction she'd felt had been immediate and she felt a warm flush even in the cool chill of the basement office. Spooky Mulder was not the UFO geek she'd been expecting.

But then, with a strange combination of friendliness and sarcasm, he'd immediately proceeded to accuse her of spying on him and he mocked her in that laconic voice. Baiting her. Within moments, he'd managed to piss her so completely off that she'd decided on the spot that this guy was never going to best her in anything. But then, even as she was contemplating killing him, he'd immediately moved on to pique her intense curiosity. He'd shown her people who needed their protection from the predators of the world, be they terrestrial or extra-terrestrial as Mulder believed. He'd dazzled her with strange theories and challenged both her mind and her sense of wonder.

Nothing in the last two years had changed since except along the way he'd begun to challenge her heart also.

Damn that bastard, she thought with deep affection. He was the lethal combination of being one of the most unconsciously seductive men she'd ever known and yet he managed to have that brilliant, albeit somewhat unstable, mind to boot. Loving a man like Mulder was hadn't been part of her life's master game plan, but love him she did and that game plan was now just a distant memory.

In the very beginning, she'd wondered which fascinated her more, the work or Fox Mulder. Soon, she'd realized that the two were so completely intertwined that there was no separating them so even pondering that idea was folly. "I'm not crazy, Scully, I have the same doubts you do," was his response to one of the first times she'd looked at him like he was demented. But then he'd turn around and entice her to follow him out on the precarious limb of his logic and she, who'd always preferred to stay close to the trunk in the past, found herself increasingly edging out on that branch.

Just what was she gonna do about the Mulder Problem? Scully sighed; she had no better answer today than she'd had almost two years ago, when she'd made her decision as to where her absolute allegiance would lie.

Very shortly after her assignment to the X-Files, her former classmate, Tom Colton, had asked her to work with the Violent Crimes Section when Eugene Toomes first raised his ugly, liver-eating head. She'd been eager for the opportunity for she and Mulder to distinguish themselves. She'd wanted them all to see just how good Mulder was. However, the disrespect shown her partner had astounded her. It was so blatant that the other agents didn't even bother to whisper when they called him "Spooky.”

After a particularly ugly confrontation with Colton, Mulder had told her that he would understand if she decided to continue working with the VCS. She knew his offer was sincere; that he'd realized how being his partner was beginning to affect how the rest of the FBI viewed her. But even as he'd said the words he'd reached out and toyed with the long pendant she was wearing, seemingly to just be straightening it. As she looked up into his eyes, something made her feel as though he was also holding on to her, silently hoping she wouldn't go.

She hadn't gone of course, had never even considered going. But looking back, she realized that signaled the first of many times she would feel subliminal messages from Mulder; a look, a touch or action that was very different from his spoken words.

Over the next two years, her former friends within the FBI began to distance themselves. They had careers to think about and after all, Scully was now part of that Spooky Patrol. Since everyone knew that Mulder was off, there certainly had to be a little something off about Scully too. No one who valued their career wanted that stigma attached to them.

Yes, the truth was out there, she thought ruefully, and the truth was that it was entirely Mulder's fault that her social life became a dry lakebed of inactivity. Men who'd once called her quite regularly stopped calling. Female co-workers that she used to go shopping or to a movie with suddenly became very busy. She even stopped being invited to boring FBI social functions, not that she particularly wanted to go, but she did want to be invited. In Scully's mind, perhaps the lowest point came when the FBI softball team told her they were full and couldn't use her. That was particularly disheartening as they were so pathetic that even a poodle who could play catch would have been welcomed with open arms. However, they didn't want Dana Scully, AKA Mrs. Spooky.

Now, other than having the occasional need to mess with other people's heads, if Mulder minded their ostracization he didn't show it. As long as he was given relatively free rein, Mulder didn't seem to mind that his assigned office had, in fact, once been the copy machine room and had no windows or heat. He didn't mind that it was so far away from everyone else in the FBI that it was something akin to being assigned to steerage on the Titanic. He didn't mind that the FBI hadn't provided his partner with a desk or even had her name inscribed on the door almost as though they were unwilling to acknowledge that this wasn't a slam-dunk temporary assignment. He didn’t mind that his chances for advancement within the bureau were now roughly the same as Cancer Man marching one of his little gray friends up before Congress to sing songs and tell tales.

But she'd minded. In fact, it had infuriated her for the longest time. How could it possibly be that no one, except perhaps Skinner, saw the value of their investigations? Eventually she'd become reconciled to the fact that she and Mulder were the bastard children of the FBI, the kind spoken about in whispers and rarely invited to family reunions. Together they had indeed become the FBI's most unwanted. She never regretted her allegiance, or her decision to stand with Mulder in their search for the truth. But of all the other injustices they'd faced, the ones perpetrated by their fellow FBI agents particularly galled her.

After a bit of more browsing in the travel section, she went back in search of Melissa. She'd apparently moved on from the New Age section and after wandering up and down for some time, Scully found her ensconced on the floor in front of the paperback romances. She watched in fascination as her sister methodically pulled a book off the shelf, shook it, and started reading where it fell open. She'd scan the paragraph quickly and then set the book aside in one of two stacks. "Missy, what the hell are you doing?" she finally asked after a few moments of watching this procedure.

Melissa looked at her sister with great patience, as though Scully was a slightly slow child who needed extra help. "I'm reading the sex scenes to see if it's worth buying," she answered. "If that part is really creased in the book, it must be good.”

Scully noticed that three other people in the aisle all immediately started shaking their books. Scully nodded her head slightly as a smile at her sister's technique crossed her face. "So, what you're saying, is that you don't judge a book by its cover, you judge a book by whether or not is shakes open to great sex?”

"You got it. You ever read these? You can pick up some rather interesting tips. Listen, 'Hank gasped as Cassandra took his proud manhood deep in her--'"

"I get the idea, Melissa! Thank you." Scully interrupted because she knew Melissa and she knew where this conversation would head.

Melissa looked up from the book in her lap to her sister. There was nothing she enjoyed quite so much as tormenting her little sister just a bit. Dana wasn't a prude by a long shot. But she was also letting her best years slip by chasing down little green men with that partner of hers, when, it was the partner that Melissa thought she should be chasing down. "Well, you might want to try reading a few of these sometime Dana; might relieve some of that sexual tension in your body. I mean I bet your aura is a dark ugly color by now.”

Scully tried to ignore the fact that the people, who'd been shaking their books a moment ago, had now turned to see the aura of a sexually deprived woman. She gave Melissa The Look.

"I'm only trying to help," Melissa protested. "I know it's been a long, excuse the expression, dry spell for you now.”

Now people were poking their heads around the aisle to get a gander. Scully knew that when Melissa was in a goading mood, she could be relentless and she knew that Melissa blamed Mulder for her appalling lack of social life. OK, so Mulder was to blame, but she didn't want to discuss it in the paperback romance section of store. Besides, Scully already knew her sister's next question--it was always the same.

"So, Dana--you ever gonna do anything about that Mulder Problem?”

Scully sighed, where had she heard that question before? Oh, yes, she asked it herself that about 10 minutes ago. She leveled her best stern look at her sister. "I'm going over to the history section for a while--take your time." Scully turned on her heel made her way back down the narrow aisle. Just as she was squeezing past an elderly matron who was pouring over the cookbooks, she heard Melissa's voice call loudly out to her.

"You know, a little one-handed fiction won't make you go blind, it might even do you some good.”

Scully felt her fair-skinned face turn red as the matron looked up at her. Then the older woman patted her on the arm gently and said, "She's right you know, dearie." As she glanced around, she noticed that the few other patrons in the bookstore within earshot all smiled and nodded sympathetically at her plight. Scully she felt like she was wearing a sign: Untouched by Male Human Hands in Over Two Years.

Suddenly, somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard a Mulderesque voice in her head, "Yeah, but a few aliens may have copped a feel or two, huh Scully?" Somehow, even the imagined sound of Mulder's voice made her smile a bit.

She liked that Mulder called her Scully. In many ways, Dana seemed almost a different person to her. Still part of her, of course, but a far less interesting part. Dana seemed rather ordinary now, very tame. Dana was earnest, efficient, and just slightly dull. Her dentist called her Dana.

But the extraordinary man she loved called her Scully and that woman lived a far more extraordinary life than Dana had ever dreamed of. Mulder had opened the doors to that life. She'd stepped through on her own to be sure and she stayed because she wanted to. But she never forgot that it was Mulder who'd made her realize there was far more in the world to challenge her intellect than lecturing to the bored faces at Quantico and he'd shown her that there were people who needed the help and protection that they alone could offer. Over the last two years, she'd discovered that she liked being Scully a hell of a lot more than she'd ever liked being Dana.

She had no desire for Mulder to use her first name, never once believed that it would bring them any closer. Indeed, the very few times he'd used her name had mostly disturbed her. Just after her father had died, Mulder had called her Dana when speaking to her. She knew, in his way, that he was trying to be solicitous in his manner towards her. But instead of creating intimacy, it had created distance. It had caused her to hesitate from telling him what she'd wanted to tell him.

Once, long ago, she'd started to call him Fox and he'd corrected her. But she'd never viewed it as a privilege he denied her but granted to others. Quite the opposite, she believed he'd come to feel the same way about their connection as she did; felt that just as Fox and Dana were there for family and associates to use, Scully and Mulder were for each other.

Scully decided to wander over towards the fiction section. The real fiction section she thought smugly, not that stuff that was holding Melissa's attention so adroitly. Mulder also was a voracious reader, although mostly in the paranormal exploration areas. Unless, of course, you could count the letters to Penthouse as literature, she thought with a laugh. An Oxford graduate and avid peruser of Celebrity Skin, her partner was a true Renaissance Man. Scully smiled thinking about Mulder's quite adolescent glee when he had the opportunity to zing her with some salacious observation or remark. Someday, she would take him up on one of those innuendoes and shock the hell out of both. She thought quite a bit about what lay behind the humorous words often so deftly used to divert attention from the moment.

Over the last two years, she'd discovered other little bits of Mulder, tantalizing glimpses of what lay behind the merely obvious. In this case though, familiarity didn't breed contempt; it only bred a deep longing to know more. Sometimes he had a reserve that was like a thick black tar that she couldn't push through. His quick, deft mind easily deflected inquiries with a smart-ass, well-aimed barb and he could go days with conversation that was no meaningful than the disclosure that he had dry cleaning to pick up. Then, in a quicksilver swing, he'd volunteer something incredibly personal. He would be open about his feelings in a way she never expected. It was almost always out-of-the-blue, almost always under duress. But the honesty was there for her to feel.

Like the time he'd returned from the Puerto Rico fiasco with nothing to show but useless blank tapes. He'd been so close and they'd taken the tools away to do his work when they'd shut down their office and sent her back to Quantico. They'd at least assigned her back to her old position, something for which she was trained. But they'd put Mulder on meaningless, tedious cases. Punishment cases really, far below his talents and certainly below his worth as they tried to break him. Tried to get him to just shut up and go away.

He'd thought that Puerto Rico may have been his last chance to get hard evidence of his beliefs and she knew that coming up empty had to be one of the more crushing disappointments in his life. She'd feared that the loss of the tapes would be a final lethal blow to his spirit. But she'd been wrong. She'd underestimated him and his formidable resolve. Instead of folding as his adversaries had hoped, he'd gotten past the frustrating setback, even more determined that they wouldn't grind him down. "I may not have the X-Files, Scully, but I still have my work," he'd told her resolutely. But then a moment later, he'd softly added, "and I've still got you.”

He'd said it so quietly, as though the realization had just occurred to him. It had been the first time he'd ever really acknowledged to her face that he knew her to be his ally. With Mulder, she'd learned to rely on her gut feelings to determine what he was thinking and she'd become very good at it, but tears had come to her eyes on her drive home as she thought about his simple words.

Other words had passed between then during their time together, at times stubborn and bitter. There were other times when they'd hurt each other, both accidentally and intentionally. She would always remember the look in his eyes as she'd shut the door on the quarantine room in that ice-station in Alaska. The betrayal on his face as he stared at her cut her so deep. In her mind, she knew she'd done the logical thing, the rational thing--and never had any decision she'd made felt so unconditionally wrong in her heart.

She'd sat outside that room for hours as miserable as she'd ever been in her life, knowing Mulder was just on the other side feeling utterly alone, scared, and abandoned by her. So near and yet so far. She'd not expected him to understand her reasons for her actions, not expected him to ever trust her again and she'd not expected him to forgive her. But he had. He'd said to her, "I want to trust you" and he'd put it behind them, never once throwing it back in her face that he'd been right. He needed her more than he needed to satisfy his pride and she loved him for that.

Alaska had been a turning point for her. Both in this job and with Mulder. She knew that she could never again allow her natural instincts to be overruled by cold logic and that she would have to find a way to meld the two opposing factors. She struggled with that war everyday but she would rather live with that struggle than ever see that look in Mulder's eyes again.

On the day they'd met, he'd asked her, "When convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?" In the last two years, she'd discovered the answer was yes. As the layers of conspiracy piled on, his once solitary quest had become theirs. The more she saw, the more she questioned and the more she realized that the fantastic might, in some cases, be the only explanation she would be able to deduce. It was so...so.... Perhaps the word she was searching for was schizophrenic. Looking up, Scully she suddenly realized she'd wandered into the abnormal psychology section. Maybe the truth was in there, she thought wryly.

But she loved that there was nothing half-hearted in Mulder's feelings; he was open to his own emotions in a way she rarely allowed herself to be. He allowed himself to feel the extremes in a way that she was unaccustomed to and it both frightened and fascinated her. She'd seen him shake with rage and with tears of despair. She'd seen him consumed with bitter disappointment and frustration. She'd seen him be self-centered, selfish, and arrogant. She'd seen him be gentle with children and compassionate to victims. He was deeply suspicious of his superiors, never thinking to hide it and he was incapable of suffering fools gladly. On rare, rare occasion, she'd even heard him laugh with genuine happiness and not the sarcastic glibness she was more accustomed to. He was both tough on her and fiercely protective to a fault. The truth of the matter was that she loved the man, even though he drove her fucking nuts sometimes.

But she knew that she drove him crazy too, in many ways. Because along their journey together she'd also sensed his craving for her although it was an unspoken topic between them. But it was there, just as hers was.

The first time she realized he felt the same pull she did was very, very shortly after she'd joined the X-Files. They'd been sitting closely side-by-side as he showed her something on his computer. His physicality beckoned to her and she'd used his distraction with whatever he was showing her to study him closely and openly. As his voice soothed from the background, she'd surreptitiously breathed in his scent and noted the nape of his graceful neck. God, how could a man in a plain white shirt be so damn sexy? Her gaze moved along that strong jaw line and she took close stock of that tiny dark mark on his smooth cheek, the one she had this insane longing to touch her lips to. Fearing she might act on the impulse, she shifted her gaze slightly and it was then that she noticed something she hadn't before.

Mulder had a pierced ear.

There was something just so completely incongruous about that discovery that she'd smiled to herself and leaned in to look more closely. However, Mulder chose that moment to turn to say something to her and they nearly bumped noses. Their eyes locked together and he was clearly startled to find her so close. Their faces lingered mere inches from each other and other all movement froze. Neither blinked and she saw the change in his face as he searched her eyes for something--permission perhaps. Scully saw Mulder swallow hard as they could each feel the other's slow breath against their lips. The moment stretched on as the only sound in the room was her thudding heart, surely, he could hear it. She could see the tiny gold flakes in the green hazel of his eyes and his lips parted softly.

"You have a pierced ear," she said quite unnecessarily, trying to explain her intrusion into his personal space and feeling absurdly pleased that she didn't stammer. "I've never seen you wear an earring.”

Mulder nodded slowly, never once dropping his gaze from hers. In fact, he leaned in closer to her ear as though sharing a secret, "I don't wear the diamond drop in the office, the FBI tends to frown on that," he said quietly as a shiver ran through her at the feel of his breath. He drew back to look at her again, but there was no smart-ass grin as would have usually accompanied such a comment. He was waiting for her.

It was her turn to swallow slowly. "How long have you had that?" she was whispering now because to speak in her normal voice with him so close somehow seemed like shouting. She wondered if she was any more successful at covering the truth in her eyes than he was. Probably not because now a small smile appeared on Mulder's face. The genuine smile. The one that took her breath. Oh God, she was going to get lost here any second.

He smiled just slightly, seeing what was really going on in her head, what was happening behind the words. "It was something I did back in school," he answered, his eyes seemed to be looking inside her.

All she would have to do is move forward two inches and take what she wanted. What he wanted. But she didn't. Instead, she'd chickened out completely as some bit of unwelcome good sense gave her a mental slap. She leaned back slowly into the safety of her own personal space. "At Oxford?" she'd asked in a normal voice, breaking the fragile and tenuous bond between them.

Mulder held her gaze a moment, his eyes narrowed slightly as though deciding. After a moment, he blinked slowly and the warmth left his eyes, replaced by cool acquiescence. He too leaned back and nodded. "Yeah," was all he said in a deliberately measured voice as he turned back to the computer screen and launched into a monologue on his findings on the case, his voice moving back into that professional cadence and clearly closing any further discussion on the subject that had originally piqued her interest.

Both the closed subject and the unrealized kiss had played in her mind and she'd been left with the certain knowledge that he'd wanted her to kiss him as much as she'd wanted to. He'd been disappointed that it didn't happen. That night had been the first of many that she gone home alone, but carried Mulder in her head all night. It was a while longer until she allowed herself to find relief by her own touch which she imagined to be his. She didn't know it then, but over their time together many such moments would come. And go. And always, the ridiculousness of it all always ran through her mind and yet, at the same time, she's also wondered if his reasons for not acting on the moments were the same as hers.

She'd concluded that they were probably not, for their individual experiences in the world before they'd met had been so vastly dissimilar different and the result was that each of them had brought very different emotional baggage along on their journey together. She didn't need Mulder's educational training to understand that most of her life, she tried to gain her father's approval, never realizing until after he'd died that she'd always had it. She also knew that in some ways she'd substituted Mulder for her father. His approval was deeply important to her because he was the only man she'd ever respected as much as she'd respected her father.

But her father's death had also shown her a valuable lesson. She'd learned that feelings didn't always need the validation of being spoken aloud to be real. Her father, for whatever reason, hadn't said the words that she'd thought she'd needed to hear. But in her time working with Mulder, she'd learned to trust what she felt as much as what she saw or heard. Even though she was scared to believe in it all, Mulder had given her that gift of trusting her own insight and he'd unknowingly freed her a lifetime of unrelenting questions about her father.

She only wished she could help to free him the same way.

Scully understood her own fears and during their time, she believed that she'd begun to understand Mulder's. As she slowly discovered more about him, she discovered the turmoil in his head that wouldn't allow him the freedom that others took for granted.

Her natural love for Mulder made her wish she could erase all his past hurts and disappointments. Yet, at the same time, she was fully conscious of the truth that the painful experiences of Mulder's past had combined to make the man she loved _into_ the man she loved. Had his past been different, he would not have become the singular man he was today. He would be merely ordinary, he would be average, he would not be...Mulder.

She had to stop and remind herself of the difficulty of Being Mulder from time to time. He could be so driven, so single-minded, and even arrogant that he would lose sight of the far more reasonable possibilities. She'd begin to lose patience and her aggravation with him would begin to rise to intolerable levels. But then she'd step back and recall what Being Mulder entailed. She would remember that he had every good reason to be the way he was.

For Mulder, all semblance of an ordinary family life died abruptly the night his eight-year-old sister Samantha disappeared while in his care and it was never resurrected. Mulder had suffered for its demise more than anyone else had for he'd been completely unable to account for what happened to her.

Scully could only imagine what it must have been like for the boy Mulder had been. He would have been harshly and relentlessly interrogated by disbelieving law enforcement officials. He would have had to face the questions, whispers, and looks from incredulous family members, neighbors, and friends. She wondered what it must have been like to have had to return to school in a small community where people just didn't disappear without a trace, where no one have believed that he didn't know what happened or rather, didn't remember what happened. Scully knew the thoughtless cruelty of children, knew the torment and ostracization that they were capable of.

It must have been an ordeal such as she could only imagine and one that Mulder had had to face alone with no support. For in a very true sense, Mulder also became an orphan at age 12. First, he'd lost his baby sister to God knows what and then he'd lost his parents by their own choice. From what little Scully had been able to ascertain, it seemed that Mulder's parents, instead of cherishing and loving their remaining child all the more, had actually done little of either. In fact, Mulder had borne the brunt of their blame and indifference towards each other and Scully's heart ached for both the boy who'd been abandoned so cruelly and for the man who still searched so desperately for answers.

As a child, he would not have known of the conspiracies and lies they knew of now. No, Mulder would have only known that his sister had been lost while entrusted to his care and no matter how much he wanted to, how much he tried to, he could not offer any answers or explanations. It wasn't until 1989, at age 28, when Mulder first underwent regressive hypnotherapy treatments that he finally recovered any memory of that night. What he'd remembered had set him on the course he was on now. No matter how fantastic that answer might be, she knew he clung to it partly because it was his only chance for salvation from the guilt, responsibility, and sense of failure that fate had imposed upon a 12-year-old boy.

When she'd first seen the poster in Mulder's office that proclaimed, "I want to believe," she'd simply assumed that he'd meant that he wanted to believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life. But after listening to the tapes of his hypnotherapy sessions, she realized that she'd been very wrong in her initial assumption.

She'd come to understand that what Mulder wanted to believe in was the promise made by the voice he'd heard in his head the night his sister disappeared. That voice had promised him that his sister would be returned unharmed someday. He wanted to believe in that elusive promise when all the conventional wisdom in the world would tell him not to. Scully knew in his heart that there were times when Mulder doubted the voice's promise, even doubted the existence of the voice itself. But it was all he had and because she loved him, as much as the possibility of that voice didn't fit anywhere into her scheme of the world, Scully would die before she'd tell Mulder to give up his hope in that promise. Because she loved him, she was determined to see that that promise was kept to him in some manner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Mulder's Apartment**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

Mulder could now honestly say he was alert. The shower, hot coffee and cold ravioli had revived him. He'd expanded his knowledge of the world by reading the sports section. He'd even managed to dump a load of laundry into the washer and dress himself in jeans and turtleneck sweater.

OK, a few more hours shot down--now what the hell was he gonna do?

There were some files piled on his desk that he couldn't bring himself to be interested in at the moment. He thought briefly about calling Scully with the excuse that he wanted to talk about the case they were wrapping up, but then he remembered that she'd mentioned that she had plans with her sister today.

Scully's family both amazed and discomforted him. They seemed to like spending time together; It was very weird.

He remembered the first evidence he'd seen of this phenomenon. It was just before Christmas in 1993. He'd stopped at Scully's to pick her up on their way to the airport for an assignment. He'd been early and as he waited for her to finish packing, he'd looked at Christmas cards on her mantle with amazement. Scully actually got Christmas cards from her family, with like, real handwriting in them. Seeing a particularly beautiful card he picked it up and saw it was from Scully's mother.

Mulder had taken an immediate liking to Mrs. Scully, perhaps because she was the mother of the woman he'd come to love or perhaps because for some strange reason, Mrs. Scully seemed to like him. That had surprised him a bit and he'd wondered what the deal was with that. He knew that he wasn't exactly the kind of person that people immediately warmed to because of his sweet nature and even temperament.

Inside the card, she'd written her daughter an affectionate, warm note; telling her she loved her, that she was proud of her, how much she was looking forward to having her family come home soon Christmas dinner in a few weeks.

Mulder had stared at the note, re-reading it several times, suddenly feeling a little blue. Wow, I bet Scully's Christmas present doesn't arrive by UPS on the day after Christmas either, he thought.

"What is it Mulder?" Scully had returned to the living room and noticed his pensive look as she placed her bag by the door.

Mulder had covered his unusual outbreak of sentiment quickly as he placed the card back on the mantle. "Just looking at the note from your Mom--Hey, you sure have her fooled." He immediately regretted his sarcasm. Why did he say that, he wondered, that wasn't what he'd meant at all. "It's just nice that she says those things to you," he amended.

But Scully had smiled, seeming to understand him as she usually did. "I'm sure you'll be getting one too, Mulder, Mom does like to spread it around. 'Tis the season to gush in the Scully family, you know.”

"Ah well, you see that's where our family holiday traditions vary--in the Mulder clan it's the season to be constipated." Scully had laughed quietly at his joke but as she'd predicted, when they'd arrived back in town a few days later, he'd found a card from Mrs. Scully waiting for him with all his other mail. In it, she'd graciously invited him to Christmas dinner if he wasn't busy with his own family. He'd laughed aloud at that. Not a problem Mrs. Scully. She'd written something about how often Dana spoke so highly of him. Mulder had smiled rather insensibly at the words and wondered desperately about what Scully had said. He felt like some dweeb in high school, but he still wanted to know what she'd said.

He hadn't been able to bring himself to go to the family dinner that year, but the invitation extended by Mrs. Scully had meant a lot to him. He'd received another card from her this last Christmas. It had the same kind words, this time thanking him for being there to support her during her daughter's disappearance and for his efforts to bring her back. They were words of thanks Mulder didn't feel he'd earned, but he knew they were sincerely meant. Mrs. Scully had extended another dinner invitation and again, he'd declined. But he'd kept that card also; it was still in the back of the top drawer of his desk at home. Someday, he might be up for the family thing on Christmas, but not yet. Maybe when he and Scully were...were...

The sound of a large truck rattling down the street broke into his reverie, causing him to return to the present, now irritated with himself. When he and Scully were what? He didn't even know what the hell were they now. What he and Scully were now fit no known category neatly. His only comfort in the matter was the fact that he knew that not being able to categorize what they were probably drove the ever-analytical Scully more nuts than it did him. Mulder took a mild, malicious pleasure in that knowledge.

He stared out the window as he realized that he couldn't call Scully, even with a lame excuse, because she wouldn't be home yet. Although, his little voice enticed, she did say they were coming to Alexandria to a restaurant in Old Town. Granted, Scully hadn't asked him to join them but on the other hand, she hadn't really not-invited him either. He briefly pondered the ramifications of accidentally running into them there. There was a slight chance that Scully might buy it, after all, she still believed in coincidence, whereas he knew better. Glancing at the clock he realized it was probably too late for that and that he'd missed his window of opportunity. He sighed. He'd missed a hell of lot of windows of opportunity, he thought, so what's one more?

Besides, as much as he wanted to see Scully, the thought of spending time with her sister Melissa was just a little too unnerving. He'd met Melissa Scully for the first time three months ago, standing over her sister's hospital bed. She'd told him that Scully had told her not to call him Fox. He'd been too preoccupied at that moment to really ponder that statement, but later he'd thought about it a lot.

How had Melissa known that? How had she known to come to him later and slap him up aside the head over Scully? Although he was an absolute believer in psychic abilities, he wasn't sure if that was what Melissa had or not. Whatever it was, she was just someone who saw and understood just a little too damn much for his comfort. Basically, between Scully's visions of her dead father, Melissa's spiritualism and their mother's pre-cognitive dreams, there was something just a little too damn spooky about the female side of the Scully family.

A restless feeling nagged at him though. He needed to get out from the close confines of his apartment; he needed to just get moving somewhere. Normally, when such a mood struck, he would go running, but he wasn't quite up to a long run yet. After some more internal debate, he decided to go for a walk, after all, you never knew whom or what you might run into. Mulder yanked his long black winter coat off the rack and headed out the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Simon's Used Bookstore**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

Scully also had a restless feeling; she'd now looked at virtually every row the bookstore had to offer. Who would have thought there could be twenty yards of books on electric trains? Not to mention that wandering wasn't doing anything to get her mind off Mulder. Indeed, everywhere she turned, she kept running into things that reminded her of him. Even while in the biology section, she'd found a whole row of books on worms. She laughed a bit thinking she could have used them a while back while Mulder was tracking down that fluke worm. As she remembered that case, she'd remembered that was when Mulder had told her that he was thinking of leaving the FBI.

He'd told her that it was now clear that they weren't going to let them work as partners again and that hope had been the only reason, he could think of to stay with the FBI. His words had literally knocked the breath out of her. It was bad enough that they'd been separated as partners, but the thought of him gone for good had rocked her.

Later, she'd tried to tell him that she didn't want him to go. It had come out all so wrong. She'd babbled something about how she hoped that he knew that she would consider it more than a professional loss if he were to leave the FBI. It had come out sounding so completely lame that she'd been mortified. Mulder had merely looked at her blankly and nodded slightly. Gee, she told herself contemptuously, he was probably so underwhelmed by that persuasive outpouring of emotion that he didn't know what to say. Scully shook her head, still embarrassed by the memory. God, I'm just such a loser sometimes.

It wasn't until Mulder teamed with that bastard Krycek, that it finally dawned on Scully that he was really no longer her partner. As much as that hurt, she also realized that action had also lifted the professional barrier between them. Granted, as far as Scully was concerned, their professional relationship had been the least of the restraints that had separated them. But still, it had been there and now it was gone.

After her pathetic little speech, she'd started to do a little better at communicating her feelings. She'd played with him softly and seductively on the phone about his new partner, telling him with her words that it must be nice to have someone who didn't poke holes in all his theories, but her tone really asking if he missed her. In response, she could almost feel his smile and surprise over the phone line. He'd responded with his voice lowered to that soft growl as he teased her back, his slightly stammering words telling her that he didn't know how he'd put up with her so long, but his tone telling her that he'd loved every minute of it and that he missed her.

But before she could act any further, she'd run out of time. Duane Barry, among the so many other things he'd taken from her, had taken Mulder away from her too.

"Dana!"

Scully was startled out of her thought when she heard Melissa scream her name and she went running back to where her sister had been only to discover that she wasn't in the paperback section anymore. Scully looked about frantically, searching, but she couldn't see through the tall shelves and stacks of books.

"Melissa? Melissa, where are you?" she called.

She heard Melissa's voice come over the shelves. "I'm over here." Scully relaxed a bit, nothing appeared to be terribly wrong.

"Where are you?" she called again.

"Here." Melissa supplied helpfully.

"WHERE here?" Scully yelled in irritation.

"Against the very back wall on the right. Get over here. Now!"

Scully ran down the main aisle to the back wall where the used magazines were stacked by category. There she found again found Melissa sitting on the floor in front of tall stack of magazines, clutching a one to her chest. She appeared to have all her body parts and no one was holding a knife to her throat. I swear, Scully thought, if she screamed like that because she saw a cute purse in a 10-year-old catalog, I'm gonna kill her.

"What, what is it?”

"You have to see this--I can't believe it." Melissa was giggling like a 12-year-old.

"See WHAT Melissa?”

Melissa held up a magazine in triumph. It was an ancient edition of Playgirl sporting a stunning young surfer on the cover. Jesus Christ, Scully thought in exasperation, she'd scared the shit out of her over that. "Melissa, for God's sake, it hasn't been that long," Scully hissed, "I do remember what a nude man looks like!"

Melissa grinned and shook her head. "Not this one, I bet." She opened the magazine and held it up as Scully leaned over to focus in. A very young and very naked Mulder stared back at her.

Scully screamed. It was most definitely a girly scream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Old Town Shopping District**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

Mulder had been wandering for quite some time. The cold brisk day was refreshing and he felt physically better now that he was outside the confines of his apartment. Despite his best intentions, he'd found himself walking down the street where the restaurant was that Scully. He knew this part of the city well, just a few blocks over there was a used bookstore that he visited often. Feeling like a total blockhead, but too far gone to care, he'd casually walked by the restaurant a few times, surreptitiously looking in the window. By the third pass, it was clear that Scully wasn't in there, although he was sure the patrons by the window thought him a little strange.

He stood on the corner a few moments trying to decide what to do and where to go as he scanned the parked cars on the street, looking for Scully's. Of course, Melissa could have driven, he remembered. Of course, he could always pass her a note in study hall on Monday too, he thought ruefully, his overt adolescent behavior making him somewhat foolish even as he indulged it. Why was he as such a loss for words around her? When they fought, he always had plenty to say. When they were in danger, he had no problems talking. When he was enticing her to investigate something he knew she would balk at, words fell from his lips. But otherwise, he almost squirmed when it came to something personal.

That changed a little when he'd been partnered with that rat-bastard Krycek. He'd been consulting Scully on his cell phone when his new partner walked up. Scully heard and suddenly her expressive voice turned soft and seductive on him as she'd teased him about how it must be nice to not have a partner who second-guessed his every move. He'd actually stammered as he told her that he hadn't known how he'd put up with her so long, but really longing telling her that he wouldn't have traded a moment of it. Then a silence came over the line; a silence where he should have said something else, he could have said something else because, after all, she wasn't his partner anymore and it wouldn't have been in appropriate in the least. He'd had no professional excuse for his hesitation, only personal ones and so he hadn't said what he wanted to. She'd opened the door but before he could step through, she'd been abducted. God, I'm such a loser sometimes, he thought.

He was startled out of his reverie when someone asked him if he was lost because he'd been rooted to the same spot for quite some time. Mulder shook his head and began walking again. He was lost all right, but just not quite the way the passerby had thought. He continued his stroll along the quaint brick streets and historical buildings, winding his way towards the bay front. A wander along the many parks along Oronoco Bay might be the thing he needed to get his mind off Scully.

As he walked, he stopped to look in the windows of Simon's Used Bookstore. Mulder had frequented the store for years and knew the owner Simon, a long-retired DC cop, well. As he did for all his regular customers, the old man kept an eye out for new acquisitions that would be of interest to them so he would call Mulder from time to time when something new on UFOs or other paranormal phenomena would come in. Mulder considered going in for a bit, but he knew that Simon would want to talk. Once the old man had discovered that Mulder worked for the FBI, Simon had apparently decided they were comrades and he would regale Mulder with long stories about getting the bad guys. Lately, being from the old school, Simon often teased Mulder about having a woman for a partner. He kept asking him when he was going to bring his "lady friend" in. Mulder would explain that she was a partner and not a lady friend. Simon would just smile and offer up some free and unsolicited advice on Mulder's personal life. Most of the time, Mulder didn't mind, in fact he was kind of fond of the old guy, but today he just didn't want to deal with it so he moved on past the window.

"Fox!"

Sighing inwardly, Mulder turned to see Simon standing in doorway of his store. He'd obviously seen him through the windows. "Fox, you're not coming in?" the old man asked as he shuffled over toward him on the sidewalk.

"Hi Simon. No, I can't today. I have to be somewhere.”

"Always in a hurry, Fox.”

"Not always. Just today.”

"Off to see your lady friend?" Simon smiled as he teased the younger man.

Don't I wish, Mulder thought as he played along with a half-hearted smile. "Nope. Not today, she ditched me.”

"What, ditch a good-looking guy like you? Women--go figure!" Simon retorted. "Come on in, I've got a new shipment you can look through.”

Mulder begged off. "Really, I just can't right now, but save them for me.”

Suddenly from deep inside the store a playful scream emanated followed by some loud giggling and the sound of crashing books. Simon looked at Mulder in exasperation. "Damn kids, they're always getting into something. Well, take care Fox, you look tired. Get that lady friend partner of yours to take better care of you." With that, the old man turned and headed back inside the shop to go make some teenaged girls get back in line.

"You take care too, Simon," Mulder said eternally grateful for fate stepping in and taking Simon's attention. Mulder moved on, crossing the street quickly before Simon could come back and turned the corner, heading on to the waterfront again. As he walked, he thought about his "lady friend" and about how he would love to get her to take care of him and about how he would love to take care of her. Forever.

Yes, this was a great idea, he thought ironically; this walk was just doing wonders for getting his mind off Scully.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Simon's Used Bookstore**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

Upon hearing the screams from the back of his store, the owner came running. As he came around the corner, he was surprised to see two grown women instead of the teenagers he was expecting. Scully, who'd knocked over a stack of books as she'd snatched the magazine from her sister's hands, instinctively hid it behind her back as though the old man was going take it away from her.

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked in irritation after determining that neither woman was bleeding or being held at gunpoint.

"I saw a mouse?" Melissa offered lamely as she quickly went to work stacking the books back up.

"Lady, I got real customers and since," he looked pointedly at Scully, "we already got to hear all about your sex life a little earlier, would you two mind moving along?”

Melissa finished replacing the last book. "Pay the nice man for the magazine, Dana," she said with as much dignity as she could muster. They followed the man to the counter, paid for the magazine and almost ran out onto the sidewalk. Once safely outside, they sat on a bench and quickly turned back to page 41. They looked at the magazine, looked at each other and both screamed again.

"How did you find this Melissa?”

"I was just digging through the whole stack and it was just there, about the ninth or tenth one I looked at." Scully looked over at her sister pointedly. "I was looking for an article," Melissa insisted.

Yeah right, Scully thought, like your stack of naked men magazines doesn't rival Mulder's naked women collection. Scully turned her attention back to the magazine at hand. Oh God, oh God, oh God, her mind chanted in mischievous and completely adolescent glee. Naked Mulder. Scully flipped the magazine closed and looked at the date on the cover. Mulder would have been 21 or so.

The photo wasn't one of the professional model shots; it was in the section where people sent in home photos of their favorite naked husbands or boyfriends. It was absolutely, positively Mulder, clear down to the mole on his cheek. The caption below said, "A Yank at Oxford." It was a stunningly sensuous photograph in black and white, large, clear, sharp, and leaving no doubts as to Mulder's religious background.

"Holy shit, what a babe," came Melissa's elegant assessment. "That could be in a museum.”

Scully nodded in agreement. Mulder did look like a work of art, he was sprawled on his back on a huge bed filled with crumpled white sheets and pillows, his head rested on one arm behind his head and the other the other curled gracefully over the gentle curve of his belly. One leg bent upwards and the other stretched out. Sunlight streamed in to the picture from somewhere, creating shadows and highlights across his skin. His dark hair was longer than it was now, but one strand still flopped over his forehead in that same manner that had teased Scully for the last two years. The rest was tousled and spilled down the side of his neck and over the pillow under his head. Stupidly, she reached out and touched it in the photograph, noticing as she did so that he was wearing a small hoop earring. Her eyes moved down the lean body, taking in every rounded curve and flat plane...

"Who the hell would have thought a body like that lurked under that boring gray FBI suit?" Melissa interrupted her thoughts as she peered over her shoulder.

I knew, Scully thought as she continued her slow perusal. Oh God, I knew. I knew just by the way he moved, walked, and wore his clothes that he was this beautiful. Mulder's body had been something of much idle speculation in her mind. She'd been careful to be covert in her observations of him ever since that incident on their second case together. She'd been sitting on the chair in her dingy hotel room as Mulder stood at the window, gazing out as he talked. As she listened, her eyes had wandered down from his profile, to where his hands were placed on his hips as he shifted his weight to one leg. She took in the sight of his firm, rounded ass encased in blue jeans. She was just thinking that it was really quite impressive, when he'd turned back to her suddenly and she'd raised her eyes quickly back to his. He hadn't said anything, but she was never sure if he'd caught her looking or not.

It was true that in the last two years she'd seen him in all various stages of undress. But it always seemed to be while she was trying to keep him from going into shock after a fire, or trying to keep him from bleeding to death from a gunshot wound or conversely, trying to keep his blood from coagulating. None of it had ever seemed like the appropriate time to take full inventory. The photograph simply confirmed what she'd suspected from the bits and pieces she'd seen.

She returned to her careful perusal. Mulder's chest had wonderful definition with that beautiful hollow over his heart where a hand could be perfectly placed to feel its beating. Just the right smattering of chest hair led down to the delineated muscles of his stomach and deeply set navel. Mulder had a great navel. The photo revealed long, lean, but hard-muscled legs, the thighs solid and merging into slim hips which then segued to another downy trail leading to the proverbial Holy Grail nestled in a courser bed of hair and lying in well-endowed repose like its owner. That's just as well, Scully thought with a smile. A photo of Mulder fully erect may have caused her to leave a puddle in the street.

"Well, it looks like God gifted Mulder with both a great mind and more than enough of the essential equipment to, ah, perpetuate his gene pool." Melissa interrupted her thoughts again with a lascivious tone.

"Melissa!" Scully lifted her eyes to glare at her sister. "Do you mind--I think I'm having an epiphany here.”

"Is that what they call them now?" Melissa asked with a laugh. "Besides, I was trying to couch it in terms you would appreciate, I would have just said he's really well hung to anyone else!"

Scully closed her eyes and dropped her head with a sigh. This is what my life has come to, she thought. Come Monday, I'll have to sit across the desk from Mulder and try to look at him without the phrase, "well hung," springing to mind.

Of course, the photograph only confirmed her speculations in that area too; after all, she hadn't been _that_ busy while in her Doctor Mode. Suddenly, she had guilt attack; I'm sitting here evaluating the merits of my partner's cock like it's a case file, she thought. Scully suddenly closed the magazine.

"Excuse me, but I wasn't through looking!" Melissa protested.

"I feel like I'm invading his privacy," she said.

"What privacy? It's not like you're peeking through his bathroom window. Obviously, Mulder knew that quite a few women and probably a few men were going to get a gander when it was published.”

Scully nodded in agreement, but still felt intrusive somehow. The photograph itself didn't bother her in the least, it was beautiful and she found nothing vulgar about it. She would have loved to have such a photo of the man she loved looking at her like that. No, it was the publication of the photo that confused her. Somehow, someway, this kind of smug and egotistical exhibition seemed very out of character from what she knew, or at least what she'd thought she knew, of her partner.

It was true that Mulder never failed to miss a sexual innuendo or double-entendre and judging from his rather extensive magazine and video collection, he was certainly not a neophyte to sexual innovations. However, even knowing all that, in her mind there had always been something charmingly, well... nerdy about Mulder. Certainly not uninitiated or unpracticed sexually, but still somehow guileless. But then again, maybe again she didn't know him at all. This was from a very long time ago, back when he was just a young "Yank at Oxford," she was reminded as she flipped open the magazine again. Long before he became the man she knew now.

I wonder what possessed him, she thought, examining the photo in detail.

The expression in Mulder's eyes back then was far less wounded than the eyes she loved so well now. She knew that change had less to do with physical youth and more to do with what those eyes had seen in the ensuing years. She noticed again the way he was gazing at the camera; his sleepy, soft gaze turned towards the camera as though someone had called his name and he'd awakened from a very good dream indeed. His expression was both seductive and well satiated, his full lips parted slightly in the beginnings of a smile meant for the person taking the picture.

The person taking the picture. The light finally went on in Scully's brain.

Phoebe Green.

Of course, she thought. Phoebe is what, or rather who, had possessed him. He'd loved her enough to pose for the thing to please her. Scully just knew that if Phoebe had asked, Mulder would have let that snotty, upper class, egotistical bitch take and publish this picture just as she was sure that Phoebe would have liked to show off her trophy. That beautiful gaze, that almost shy smile, that body was all meant for Phoebe Green.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Scully was immediately transported into a foul mood, even as her heart constricted a bit. The knowledge that one point in his life, Mulder was comfortable and light-hearted with another woman enough to do this just somehow bugged the ever-living crap out of her as the jealously began to seethe within. I can't even get him to stop ditching me, she thought, and yet for Phoebe he was ripping his clothes off and lying in splendid repose for her to show to the world. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it really pissed her off and irrationally she was focusing that anger at Mulder. Phoebe, she thought in disgust, she should have known.

"Who's Phoebe?”

Melissa's question interrupted her thoughts and Scully hadn't realized that she'd spoken the name aloud-or had she? She never quite knew with Melissa. Suddenly feeling very agitated; Scully closed the magazine and handed it back to her sister. She stood up from the bench and started walking. She needed to get moving, get some activity going besides looking at the pictures forming in her head of Mulder and Phoebe together.

"Dana, what it?" When she didn't answer or turn back, Melissa got up and followed her down the street.

Melissa allowed her sister her silence as they wandered the brick streets, heading towards the bay and the parks. Eventually, they ended up near the children's playground with the tall slides and big swings left from a time when cities still felt safe about letting children play in public parks without fear of parental lawsuit. The park was nearly deserted due to the cold weather. Scully hadn't spoken a word or lifted her eyes from the ground as she walked.

"Dana, what's going in your head?" Melissa asked finally.

Scully shook her head just slightly, feeling oddly close to frustrated tears and she wasn't sure she could make Melissa understand if she didn't fully understand herself. It was well over a year ago that she'd first learned about Phoebe Green. She still had the picture in her mind of Phoebe in Mulder's arms as they'd danced, of when he'd kissed her. She hadn't planned to see that; it was a private moment and she'd just happened into to it. However, it had disturbed her more than she would have thought and it had been a long time fading in her mind, but it had never left completely. The problem was now she had a new picture in her mind. Now, she was imagining Phoebe and Mulder together all those years ago at Oxford when this picture was taken, back when he was the kind of person who would let someone love him. She was imagining what she missed, missing what she'd never had.

Melissa saw the varied emotions crossing her sister's face and was worried. "Dana, talk to me!" She finally demanded impatiently, touching her arm. "Look, I know how you feel about Mulder, you know you can't hide that from me. So, talk to me God damn it! What's the story here with Mulder and this Phoebe?”

Scully took a bit of time answering. "Phoebe was Mulder's lover while he was at Oxford," she finally said. "She's the one who took this picture, I know it.”

"What makes you say that?”

"Because he loved her, because he would have done anything to please her.”

"You don't know that," Melissa said practically.

Scully turned to her sister, exasperated at being second-guessed on what she knew in her gut. God, this must be how Mulder feels she thought. "Look at the damn photo Melissa. Look at it! Tell me I'm wrong about how he felt about her.”

Melissa looked again at the magazine, this time concentrating on Mulder's face for the first time. She shook her head slightly; she couldn't honestly tell Dana she was wrong. She slid the magazine back into the bag and looked at her sister. "So, what do you know about this Phoebe?”

"I met her when she blew into town last year. She and Mulder attended Oxford together and he told me she was 'brilliant'. She's an agent with Scotland Yard now and she requested Mulder's help on a case. He didn't seem at all happy to see her again and I'd kind of teased him at first because it was obvious, they'd had past of some sort, but I hadn't realized the extent of it." Scully fell quiet a moment, remembering back.

"Like what?”

Scully shook her head, remembering Phoebe's rather sick game. "Mulder went off to Oxford at an early age, but more than that, I think he was pretty young and raw emotionally too. Even Mulder admitted that he'd gotten in over his head with her in the past. I think their relationship may have been one where Mulder was constantly trying to gain her approval or respect, almost like she was the damn prom queen and he was the high-school geek that she deigned to turn her gaze to.”

"So, what happened to them?”

"I had the impression she was the one who'd broken it off, I overheard him tell her that she'd driven a stake through his heart. But Phoebe was all over him though when she came back.”

"So, do you think she was on the prowl again?”

"I thought so at first, but later it became more obvious what she was up to. Mulder had told me that Phoebe liked to play mind games and I certainly saw first-hand evidence of that.”

Scully's voice was full of disdain as she continued. "Phoebe called Mulder in on an arson case knowing full well that he had deep fear of fire. She very deliberately pulled him into a situation where he was likely to falter. She used Mulder to solve a case, made herself look good, and yet still had time to amuse herself at the same time by screwing with his head. It was almost like a revenge of some sort. I think she did it because she wanted to see him struggle and fail."

"Did he?”

Her sister nodded. "Yes--at first. There was a fire in a hotel and he froze." Scully sighed, remembering Mulder's self-recriminations. "God Melissa, he was so ashamed, so angry at himself. Later, he took control back on the case and saved the lives of two children, but Phoebe had already done her damage. She'd already screwed him over and made him feel worthless.”

"Jesus, she sounds like quite a piece of work.”

"She is that," Scully agreed contemptuously.

"But why would Mulder have ever become involved with someone like that in the first place?”

"Why does anyone?" Scully shrugged slightly. That was certainly a question she asked herself many times and she'd thought about the answer a lot. "Maybe it's as simple as he couldn't see what she really was because he was obsessed with trying to gain something he thought was unobtainable. That's very much his nature. He can be blind to more obvious motivations." Scully's voice trailed off again.

Melissa waited for more information and when it wasn't forthcoming, she asked, "So, you said she was coming on to him though. Did Mulder return her attention?”

"He kissed her. They were dancing together and I saw him kiss her. It seemed almost like he was testing the waters again.”

"Well?" Her sister was spilling this story way the hell too slow for Melissa's taste. "Did he plunge in?”

"No." Scully shook her head. "We solved the case and Phoebe was gone as suddenly as she'd arrived.”

"So, you think he's still in love with her?”

Scully had thought about that question a lot too. Despite what she'd seen, she was confident in her conclusion. "No," she answered honestly. "I don't think he's still in love with her. I think he shook her loose from his head.”

"Ok, he doesn't love her, she's long gone and you're here. I'm a little confused as to why you're upset.”

You're not the only one, Scully thought. "It's not Phoebe herself, but what she left behind that bothers me. She may be gone, but her lingering after-affects live on in Mulder. He doesn't want to let anyone too near. I think she twisted him up so badly that he may never get un-kinked.”

Melissa reached out and touched her arm with a smile. "Well, maybe kinky's not so bad. You can work with it.”

Scully gave a small laugh. Like Mulder, Melissa could always make her smile despite a black mood. "No, kinky is not so bad," she agreed.

"So, I still don't get it--what's the deal?”

Scully could almost hear her sister's mind whirring away and she knew Melissa was gearing up to tell her the optimistic, touchy-feely obvious. All that bullshit romantic idealism that had so little chance for survival when planted in the harsh soil of Scully's real world.

She turned to her sister with frustration and a certain sadness in her voice. "The deal is, Melissa, is that I don't know if Mulder is capable of letting me closer. But you know, in a weird way, I'm also scared of getting what I want. I mean, Mulder exists in such an intense and fragile state. It's like his entire world is built on a soap bubble. His convictions are as strong as his doubts and he scares me because I think that it's entirely possible that he's a bit unstable and yet, for some reason, I don't seem to care!"

Scully gave a self-mocking laugh. "I mean, I'm scared because sometimes I'm not sure if I love him because of all that he is - or in spite of all that he is. Even the fact that I've allowed myself to become so unbalanced scares me. I mean really; who am I to judge Mulder's stability when the reality is that I'm an equal mess who's just little better at hiding it. The deal is that just everything connected to Mulder scares me to death.”

Scully ran out of gas with her tirade and fell silent. She wandered over to one of the empty swings and sank down heavily in defeat. Melissa dropped her purse and the paper bag on the nearby park bench, walked over to where her sister sat staring at her feet so forlornly. She sat down on the adjoining swing. "Wow--That's a lot of fucking scary," Melissa said with no sarcasm, just compassion.

"Yes, indeed," Scully nodded in melancholy agreement. "That's lots and lots of fucking scary.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Waterfront Park**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

Mulder had walked virtually the entire length of the bay. The late afternoon coldness of the day and the warmth of his coat had strangely comforted him. He should have brought gloves, but instead made do by burying his hands deep in pockets of the long wool coat he wore.

He stopped to gaze out over the water. Mulder loved the sea, or at least, he liked the idea of the sea. The reality of seasickness had made him realize early on that a life on the water was not going to work out for him, but something about its vastness and unknown depths appealed to him anyway. Perhaps for the same reasons the vastness of space caught and held his imagination even before his sister had disappeared. He watched a particularly large ship smooth by slowly to its homeport. He didn't know what kind of craft it was and wished he did. If Scully were here, she could tell him, he thought.

The daughter of a naval captain, Scully knew boats. She could name virtually every naval craft, which had impressed the hell out of him the first time he'd discovered it. Of course, most things about Scully surprised and delighted him as he discovered them. The far-reaching bulk of her knowledge never ceased to amaze him. Beyond just loving her, beyond wanting her, he also took such pride in having her as his partner.

It certainly hadn't started out that way. He'd fought Scully's assignment to the X-Files bitterly. When Skinner had called him in and told him that Blevins had decided to assign him a partner, he knew what was up. He knew the FBI didn't have any interest in assisting his investigations. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that the partner that he hadn't asked for, didn't want, and didn't need was there to spy on him; there to find reason to shut him down. So, he'd decided to check her out before she got there in order to facilitate his campaign to get rid of her.

Problem was that everything he'd discovered about Dr. Dana Katherine Scully impressed and intrigued him.

She'd been a navy brat and Mulder knew that meant she'd moved often as a child and that she would have had to learn to deal with new towns, new people, and new schools, always leaving the familiar behind. She'd earned her undergraduate degree in physics, graduating with honors. Despite himself, he'd had to admire that she'd even had the temerity to re-write Einstein in her senior thesis. He'd read the whole damn thing, although he hadn't understood a hell of a lot of it.

From there, she'd apparently thought a degree in medicine was her next best move. She'd completed her internship and residency and she'd excelled in everything assigned to her. But instead of going into practice, she was recruited by the FBI; a good-old-boy outfit if ever there was one. Challenge was clearly not something she backed down from and even before he'd laid eyes on her, it was clear to Mulder that Dana Scully was a woman of substance. It was almost too bad he had to get rid of her somehow as he geared himself up to repel the slight intruder in his world.

But Scully was also not a woman easily dismissed. Over the past two years he'd occasionally seen some guy attempt to discount her simply because she was a woman. He'd enjoyed watching her mentally slice and dice some poor sap who had quite mistakenly thought he'd had the upper hand solely on the basis he had a dick. It turned out she also wasn't half-bad at physically kicking someone's butt if needs be and, in the end, she'd certainly saved his ass on more than one occasion from the tropics of Puerto Rico to the frozen wastelands of the North Pole.

Mulder settled into a park bench and sipped the hot coffee he'd bought at Starbucks up the street. It was pretty deserted, just the occasional jogger or couple strolling by, people who had the privilege of living real lives. People who didn't know what he and Scully knew. People who didn't need to live and work in shadows, trying to determine what lie or truth to believe and struggling constantly to outwit those who sought to manipulate them.

Scully was good at that part of the game, he thought. She'd outsmarted them all on numerous occasions, including himself. She'd been the one to find him in Puerto Rico with the smallest of breadcrumbs. Although, to this day, he still wondered why she'd even bothered considering his callous behavior towards her during that time.

He'd been a selfish bastard; he knew that now. But at the time, he'd been so deeply discouraged at the closure of the X-Files project, so enraged at the tedious, unchallenging, white bread cases assigned to him. His separation from Scully had depressed him more than he'd ever thought possible. So, he'd defended himself the only way he knew how, by distancing himself emotionally.

His only excuse was that he'd been so used to being on his own that he'd just assumed that what had befallen them hadn't affected Scully the way it had affected him. He'd been so involved in his own misery that it honestly hadn't occurred to him that Scully might be having difficulties too; that she might been feeling the same as he did about their separation and the shut-down of their work. He'd just presumed that she'd moved on to her new duties and had gotten back on the career track that had been derailed by her assignment to the X-Files.

He'd been wrong about it all. Scully had quietly shown him just how wrong. She'd come to him in that dark parking garage, having summoned him under false pretenses. She'd told him that she needed to know how he was faring, needed to know if he was all right. She actually cared. She'd pushed all the right buttons and she'd looked at him with such deep disquiet that he'd finally stepped away from his self-absorption long enough to realize that maybe she might be wounded by all that had happened too, that it hadn't happened to just him. God, he really was an unbelievable ass sometimes.

So he'd given her what she asked for; he told her of his frustrations, of the doubts he harbored about Samantha, of the jumbled mess that was his emotional state. About how he'd begun to feel he was tilting at windmills. And Scully hadn't offered any platitudes or false hopes. With her soft firm voice, she'd simply insisted that he not give up, even if it all seemed too elusive to ever hang on to.

It was at that moment that he'd realized just how far they'd come together on this journey and how much they'd learned from the other despite differences. They'd gained much and now, in a strange twist, he was the one looking for the hard proof and she was the one encouraging a quest of faith.

It'd taken a long time and he'd fought it all the way, but it was during that time when they'd been separated as partners that he'd admitted to himself that he loved her. Admitted that his need for her was far deeper and complex than the simple sexual attraction he'd also felt. But then, before he could deal with his realization, Duane Barry separated her completely from him.

Duane Barry. Just his name made Mulder rage in anger still. Rationally, he knew there'd been no way to predict that Barry would take Scully that night. But even so, what remained is the fact that when his occasional nightmares didn't revolve around Samantha calling out to him, they revolved around the sound of Scully's voice on his answering machine, calling his name, begging him for help that wouldn't come in time. He'd never once, in all the time he'd known her and in all the situations they'd been in, heard her voice sound like that and it'd deadened his heart as he'd listened to it.

He still remembered, with chilling clarity, the honestly sincere look on Barry's face when he'd said he hoped that they weren't hurting Scully "too much" with their experiments. He'd thought he might die right there. Even now, he closed his eyes, hardly able to stand the thought and a sweat broke out on his forehead. He didn't need his Ph.D. to know that he was suffering from a kind of delayed stress syndrome from Scully's abduction and her equally perilous return just a few months ago.

The weeks immediately following Scully's abduction had so eerily mirrored the weeks following Samantha's disappearance that it was uncanny and it ate away at him. The hopeless unanswered questions, the dead ends, his inability to rectify the situation or have prevented it in the first place were all just further confirmation in his mind that he sucked at caring for the ones he loved best.

He'd been on the bleeding edge with dark rage and frustration when Skinner sent him out to Los Angeles to investigate the strange vampire-like murders occurring there. What Skinner hadn't realized was that Mulder had been the perfect choice for the assignment. By coincidence, he'd sent the undead to investigate the possibility of the undead. Or perhaps he'd just hoped that when Mulder finally fell prey to his self-destructive behavior he'd at least be in another state. He'd worked the case methodically, automatically, in a trance. The undead wishing to be dead. But still, his time in California had been a turning point for him.

Before California, he'd been despondent down to the very soul he hadn't thought he possessed. During the days and then the weeks without Scully, as hope faded and leads turned up dead, Mulder had wondered if anything would provide him any alleviation from the ache and guilt. When he was alone at night and tired, so very tired, of the struggle the promise of such relief would beckon to him, softly enticing him. And he'd contemplated the possibility, wondering idly if it would afford him the rest he sought. But after California, after Kristen, he'd changed his mind.

Kristen. Mulder could recall her name, but not her face. Perhaps it was because she'd been no more real to him than he'd been to her. Perhaps it was because the whole strange matter seemed so completely removed from him now, as though it had happened to someone else. And perhaps, in a very honest way, it had. In the end, he and Kristen had used each other to feel human for just a moment that one night. She'd accepted the release of his body and never questioned why he'd left her immediately, replaced Scully's cross about his neck and taken to the chair to sleep. When Kristen died the next day, the only emotion he'd felt was a sadness that she hadn't been able to find the peace she sought in the living world and had chosen to seek it another way. But he'd also decided that Kristen's way to that peace couldn't be his way.

He didn't have time for selfish, self-indulgent martyrdom. Scully was lost and he had to find her; she'd called out to him for help and he still had to answer her. He couldn't have the last time he ever heard her call his name be a cry of desperate fear. He had to hear her say his name again in her warm, soothing tone. The one that made him go weak inside when she used it.

A few weeks later Scully had been returned to him but he could take no credit for it. Her return hadn't been due to any action on his part. She'd simply appeared in that hospital bed, tethered to what seemed dozens of machines, her eyes taped shut and while one nightmare had ended another had begun. Yet, somehow, they'd come through that one together too.

Until the day he died, he would cherish the moment she'd turned towards him and said his name as he came into her hospital room. It was the moment he'd dreamed about and hung on to since she'd been taken from him. Mulder was not a man used to getting wishes granted or prayers answered. The feeling of humbleness had overwhelmed him to the point where he'd had to leave the room within a few moments until he could get a grasp on his running emotions.

He'd never loved her so well or thought her more beautiful than at that moment.

He hadn’t realized Scully's beauty at first. Certainly, when he'd first met her, he'd noted that she was attractive of course, but he'd been so completely tied up in defensively testing her, trying to figure out her real motivations that her deep heart-stopping beauty had snuck up on him somehow. But her pull on him had been there long before he'd finally had the courage to give a name to what he felt.

Originally, he'd hoped to use some moment of incompetence to get the little spy out of his basement office. However, it was apparent before they had even gotten to Oregon on that first case that that just wasn't going to happen. Scully had already gone through the case files, found the small facts, laced them together and had drawn the correct conclusions. Reluctantly, he'd had to acknowledge she was good. "Better than you thought or better than you hoped?" she'd asked him dryly when he'd arrogantly voiced his approval to her and he knew right then that getting rid of her would be no easy matter. This one was smart.

Over the next few days, her demeanor was calm, assured, detached and professional--and she'd questioned every move he made. But he'd also discovered something else on that first case; the seemingly self-possessed Dr. Scully had a vulnerable side.

He'd discovered that in a way he hadn't expected either. In the middle of a dark rainstorm, shaking and clutching her robe about her, Scully had knocked on his hotel room door and asked him to look at the marks she'd found on her lower back. He'd been completely taken aback. Certainly, part of his surprise came from the obvious; his new partner was standing there in her underwear asking him to look at her body by candlelight. It had all the makings of a great letter to Penthouse but he'd been so flustered that he'd not even had the presence of mind to take close inventory; an opportunity lost that he'd long since regretted.

When she'd turned into his arms in relief, the shock her body pressed momentary against his rattled him physically. But more than that though, he realized that Scully had honestly been very frightened and she'd come to him. She'd believed that he would somehow, someway help her if there were something wrong. As a rule, he wasn't used to that kind of faith being bestowed upon him and the realization she'd placed trust in him like that had kind of upset his resolve to be coolly distant to his new partner.

The storm and the darkness had somehow been conducive to letting down barriers and they'd talked for hours that night. He'd told her of sister, something he'd discussed with almost no one, and about how he'd come to find the X-Files. decided that he might as well be honest so he even told her that he believed she was being used as part of the agenda of conspiracy. She'd denied it of course--any good spy would--but strangely, he'd wanted to believe her.

Even more strangely, just a day or so later, he started to believe her.

In the middle of the night, in a freezing rain, he and Scully stood facing each other over an open grave. They were wet, tired, cold, and seemingly at a dead end. Perhaps encouraged by their talk the night before, he suddenly decided that now was the time to blurt out his entire theory on the case, including the whole alien abduction part. As he looked at her increasingly incredulous face, it was painfully apparent that she thought he was deranged. Feeling more disappointment than he'd thought possible, he'd turned and walked away,

But after a moment, something made him look back her way and that's when he saw the change in her face. He saw that despite her initial instinct to dismiss it, her mind began to process his information. She began speaking; applying the facts she knew to be true to his theory as though it was actual possibility, making a connection. Mulder began to shiver, not with the cold, but with the excitement of someone finally, finally listening to him and he crossed back over to her, to look down at her face. He knew better than to think she would buy into it totally, but to just have someone give some slight credence to his notions gave him physical rush.

Suddenly, she'd begun to laugh--not at him, but at herself, he realized. She laughed because she'd caught herself speculating on his theory as though it was a possibility. She'd truly considered the fantastic as a plausibility for the first time and that realization had so astounded her that she'd broken into wild laughter and he'd found himself laughing along with her.

As Scully quieted down, her eyes met his for a moment before she looked away. At that moment, he'd wondered for the first time what it would be like to kiss her, what her touch would feel like on his skin, how it would feel to be deep within her and have her look up into his eyes as he moved over her. Caught deep in the unexpected grip of that thought, he'd even leaned just slightly towards her before an uncharacteristic jolt of good sense jerked him back to reality. He'd just stood there looking down at the petite woman who was now his partner, the fleeting temptation in his heart gone for the moment, but by no means gone for good.

He supposed that because of her slight build and delicate features those fools might have discounted her, might not fathomed the depth of her heart and the strength of her mind. His adversaries in this strange game, intending to use Scully as their means of destruction, had actually sent her to him. Once again, Mulder realized that there were no coincidences, for instead of assisting in his ruin, she'd become his vindication. They'd made a _terrible_ mistake, Mulder thought, smiling at the delicious irony of it.

Mulder had never once been ashamed of his beliefs, he didn't care what anyone else thought of him personally except when their own prejudices towards him interfered with his own ability to do his job. And he was well aware that Agent Scully had most certainly heard ALL the stories before she'd walked in his door.

And indeed, Scully had questioned his motives, his theory, and his focus. She'd challenged what he saw as the truth, even forcing him to look at himself through her eyes on occasion. She'd never been afraid to call him on it when he acted like a selfish bastard. She'd made him realize there was value to hard evidence she demanded from him, even as he fought her bitterly on occasion. And over time, and for reasons he still didn't comprehend, she'd become a defender of his faith though not a convert herself. She'd become his resolute ally in his search for answers, whether they be her truth or his. And when he faltered, she was his formidable champion who protected him from evils both within and without. She validated his life's work with her presence.

"Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anyone but you," she'd said to him once in a simple honest affirmation that he knew in his heart was true. Those words and the knowledge that he was no longer alone in this had both rocked him to his core and terrified him. In trusting her, he'd lost his singular edge for now he thought in terms of "we" more often than "I." In allowing himself to love her, he'd given her a certain dominion over himself now too. Scully owned him, certainly by soul if not by body yet, but if she was aware of that power she never let on, she'd never used it to her advantage. She'd never acted without the reason that ruled her mind or the compassion that ruled her heart. However, there were times when a look or the tone of her voice made him feel that she was aware of his feelings and that she was waiting--just like him.

In a lot of ways, his life was much easier when he'd just been a solitary selfish spooky bastard. Really, he'd managed just fine; no one but himself to consider. But Mulder never lied to himself for very long. He knew he was going to crack. He wasn't sure where or when, but he knew it was going to happen because otherwise, he was going to go insane. Really insane, not just the simple insane that everyone already thought he was.

With a sigh he got up from the bench, tossed the empty coffee cup in the trash and continued his northern walk along the bays.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Children's Playground**

**Alexandria Virginia**

Melissa began to rock her swing gently, reaching over and giving her sister a push as she had when they were young. "Hey, I haven't done this for a while have you?”

Scully glanced over at her sister and smiled a bit. "No--one of many things I haven't done in a while," she said with no small amount of irony.

Melissa laughed softly as she wondered why two of the smartest and most intuitive people she knew could be so damn dim. Fate was going to have to take a hand because these people needed help. She wondered if her sister's belief in the hopelessness of her situation was as resolute as she claimed.

"Dana, I think you should ask for a transfer.”

Scully brought her swing to a halt, turning to stare at her sister, truly in shock. "What?" she shook her head as though to clear it, "What?”

"From what you just got through saying, Mulder is a mess and he's turning you into one. You have to get out now.”

"What is this Melissa, reverse psychology?" Scully asked tensely.

Melissa ignored the challenge and instead responded quietly. "He hurts you Dana. If it's as bad as you say, you can't live like that. You're living in a kind twilight zone."

Scully fell silent. What Melissa said was true, but she just couldn't imagine her life without Mulder in it. No longer her partner, no longer her friend, never her lover. She wouldn't want to live a life where Mulder was just someone she'd send a Christmas card to once a year. The thought of it was draining on her emotionally and physically. "I don't know that I could ever walk away." She admitted quietly. "I don't know that I could go back and live another way.”

"Sure, you can--you did before you started working with Mulder.”

"It was different then, I wasn't..." Scully trailed off. She wasn't what? She's been about to say, "involved." However, she wasn't "involved" now. What the hell was she? She closed her eyes a moment.

The last rays of the setting sun glinted off Scully's gold cross necklace, catching Melissa's eye. She reached out and gently lifted the tiny symbol of faith to look at it more closely, noticing that it fit entirely on the very tip of her index finger. Melissa remembered something vaguely from her childhood Sunday school days about all that it took for a miracle was faith the size of a mustard seed. Maybe her brilliant sister just didn't get that miracles can be born of the heart too.

"You know, it's really amazing that Mulder found this," she said as Dana nodded in agreement. "Mom told me that he'd tried to give it to her but that she made him hold on to it. She thought he'd needed it more.”

Scully smiled a little wistfully. "That sounds like Mom." Her mother had always been the finder of lost things, the one to bring home the abandoned puppies and the birds with the broken wings. Mulder had been no different and her mother had taken to him immediately. Oddly, Mulder seemed to like her mother and he allowed her familiarities that he didn't allow others. Scully suspected that in his heart, he was lonely for the ordinary family life the Scully's shared as much as he shied away from it.

"Dana," Melissa interrupted her thoughts as she let the cross fall gently back to its resting spot, "did you know Mulder wore this over his heart when you were gone?”

Scully shook her head slowly not sure what to make of the implication of such a seemingly un-Mulder like gesture. "No. I didn't know that. How would you have known that?”

"I can tell," she said cryptically. At Dana's look, she continued with a smile, "OK--he also was wearing it when I came to his place to ask him to come to the hospital to see you." Melissa leaned forward to look her sister straight in the eye, serious now. "Dana, Mulder wants you to love him.”

Scully sighed as she shook her head. "Wearing my cross as a remembrance doesn't mean--"

"No," Melissa interrupted firmly. "It wasn't a remembrance; it was faith. He wore it because he knew that he was going to place it back in your hand, because you two had things left to do, things to say to each other.”

Scully eyes narrowed with obvious exasperation at her sister's optimism. "And just how the hell would you know all that?”

How indeed, Melissa wondered in frustration. She just knew. But she also knew that wasn't the kind of answer that her sister could accept and she had to try to make her understand. "Dana, the first time I met Fox Mulder was in your hospital room. He made damn sure that I knew that he thought my beliefs are trite and that he was going to somehow fix all the problems. He was obsessed with looking at all the tangibles not the intangibles. Later, we argued about whether your life support should be terminated as you'd requested. He couldn't even bring himself to be in the room when your ventilator was turned off. He never said a word to Mom directly, but he looked at me with such a sense of betrayal." Melissa's voice cracked a bit and long-suppressed tears began fall silently in long suppressed guilt over her decision.

In shock, Scully reached over and took Melissa's hands in hers. "Missy, I've never felt you or Mom betrayed me. Never. You did as I'd asked you to. You did nothing wrong, please don't feel you did. Please." Scully pleaded with her sister, "I can't explain why I made it back, but I do know you did nothing to hinder the journey. I believe that in my heart, Melissa. Please don't carry that burden." Melissa held on to her hands tightly and Scully could see Melissa finding her self-forgiveness in the truth in her words.

Melissa blinked back and controlled her tears as she raised her eyes. "But Dana, I think I do understand how you made your journey back, that's what I'm trying to tell you. At first I thought Mulder's actions were just a stubborn denial of your wishes or that he was on his own macho ego-trip that he could somehow fix everything by bringing the men responsible to justice. But I was wrong, it wasn't about him, it was about you. He was afraid of failing you. He didn't believe he had anything within himself that would help you.”

She cleared her throat as Scully looked at her with great curiosity. "After your ventilator was turned off and your condition began to deteriorate, I went Mulder's apartment to tell him. I found him sitting alone in the dark. He clearly didn't want me there. He seemed to be waiting for someone, I don't know for who or what. Look, I know you don't really believe me when I say things like this, but I sensed a heaviness all around him. He wanted to stay in that dark place because he thought he deserved it somehow. A few days earlier, I'd told him that the people who'd done this to you would suffer an equal horror. He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'including myself?' I thought at the time that that was such a strange thing for him to say.”

Dana closed her eyes a moment, sighing inwardly. Not so strange at all, she thought. Of course, Mulder would believe her abduction to be his responsibility because she wouldn't have even been involved in the Duane Barry's case had she not been trying to help him. One more thing for him to shoulder alone. "Melissa, what happened was not Mulder's fault," Scully said adamantly. She paused, thinking about all she knew, all she'd seen and shook her head. "God, there are times when I'm not even really sure it was Duane Barry's fault.”

"Oh Dana, I know that. Mom knows that," Melissa assured her. "But something far more insidious than guilt was holding on to Mulder that night. He even refused to come to the hospital and I finally just left him sitting there in the dark. But whatever it was, he shook it loose and he came for you that night after all." Seeing Dana's puzzled look, Melissa paused. "Didn't you know that?”

Scully shook her head slightly. She'd had so many crazy remnants of dreams and visions that she didn't know what was real and what wasn't. So much of it had been so frightening. When she first woke up, she would have sworn that he'd been there the night before. She would have sworn that she'd heard his voice, speaking quietly to her, falling silent and then speaking again, the words never quite clear but the tone so beckoning, so beguiling. She'd felt his touch, sensed his warmth and strength in the cold of that night.

But then again, she would have also have sworn she'd earlier heard Frohike's voice too. She would have sworn that there'd been a nurse Owens who'd looked over her, spoken with her and even kissed her on the forehead. But she been told sternly that there'd been no Nurse Owens and feeling foolish, she hadn't asked Mulder or her family anymore about the voices she'd heard or what she'd seen in her mind.

Melissa nodded her head in confirmation. "He was there. I'd gone back to the hospital and found Mom in Dr. Daly's office. He was insisting that she go home, she'd been there for days with no sleep, little food. She refused and went across the hall to the ICU but she was back just a moment later. She said she'd looked in and saw that Mulder was there with you. She said that you'd be safe with him and she let me take her home.”

"You wanted to go that night Dana, you were tired of the struggle, I could feel that in you." Melissa gripped her sister's hand and Scully nodded slowly in agreement. "And Mulder could have let you go, you know. It would have been kind to let your suffering stop and it would have been easier for him in a way. He could have lived with an idealized memory of you--a nice, safe fantasy of what might have been. But he wanted all the risks and messiness of loving someone in real life. That's exactly what he wants, that's why he called you home.

"Mulder moved past his own fear and reached out across mortality for you even though it scared him to death that the only thing he had to offer you wouldn't be enough. Dana, you were dying and then you weren't. You might think that coincidence but I don't. And don't give me that crap about him being afraid. The fact that you're here proves that wrong.”

Scully looked into her sister's eyes at the gentle scolding, shaking her head slightly. "I didn't know Melissa. I didn't know it was true. I thought it was like the other dreams I'd had.”

Melissa was silent a moment as she watched her sister first absorb and then believe the truth of what she'd been told. "Dana, even if he hasn't figured out a way to act on it yet, I should think that should tell you all you need to know about the kind of love he's capable of harboring and the risks he's willing to take.”

She saw Dana's resistance ebb away as the smallest of smiles began to tug at her lips. Then, because it just wasn't in Melissa's nature to go too long without teasing her little sister, she added, "Call me silly, but in the face of all that, I think letting some chick take a naked picture really kinda pales in the comparison, don't you?”

As Melissa's final words sank in, Scully had to laugh, as she hadn't in months, maybe even years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Children's Playground**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

Fox Mulder heard Dana Scully laugh and turned back.

Just a few minutes earlier he'd been heading home, cutting across the deserted park. As he'd passed the playground, he'd noticed out the corner of his eye two grown women sitting on the park swings. Their backs were to him and his mind had mildly registered that one had red-hair. Red-hair always sent up a signal to his brain and upon the mandatory second glance, he realized it was Scully. When he looked again at the woman sitting next to her, he recognized Melissa Scully.

Mulder stopped in his tracks, leaning back against a tree, thinking that if he were the kind of person who believed in coincidence, he'd be amazed. But oddly enough, he wasn't amazed at all somehow. He stood there by the trees a moment watching them safely from behind and from an anonymous distance.

Funny, of all the fantasies he'd ever pictured in his mind about his partner, somehow Scully playing on a swing-set hadn't been among them. Of course, now that he thought about it, this new idea led to some interesting scenarios. He'd started to approach them when something else he saw made him stop up short.

He'd been too far away to hear anything of what they'd been saying, but he could tell from their body language they were engaged in some serious conversation. He'd seen Scully take her sister's hand as Melissa's shoulders had shaken a little with the movements of tears. He sighed. Obviously, they were having some sort of sister-moment and Scully was offering Melissa her comfort. He just didn't feel right intruding in on that. It was better to pass on by and hope it wasn't anything serious for Melissa for he knew how much Scully loved her sister. But he also knew the healing powers of Scully's comfort, Melissa was well cared for.

He'd watched them a few more moments anyway until finally, feeling both intrusive and a bit disappointed, he'd started to walk on, unseen, out of the park. He'd only made it a short distance when the soft music of Scully's laughter reached him. He turned back, smiling at the sound. Scully's laughter was infectious and it had been a long, long time since he'd really heard it. He just stood for a moment, entranced. Things must be all right after all, he thought.

Suddenly, he couldn't resist heading over, after all, it'd been almost 48 hours since he'd seen Scully and that was just too damn long. He moved quickly across the park and approaching with stealth from behind, he crept forward quietly, then leaned forward to place his lips next to Scully's ear. "Wanna push little girl?" he said in his best deep pervert voice.

The sudden voice in her ear made Scully jump clear out of the swing at the same time she realized it was Mulder. She whirled around, startled, glad to see him, and irritated. In other words, the usual. "Mulder! Shit! You scared me to death! What are you doing lurking about children's playgrounds?”

Mulder stood before her with his hands on his hips, smiling with smug success at having unsettled her. She tried to level him with a glare, but the unexpected sight of him just made her go weak in a way she hated. His ever-present pull on her was even more insistent when he was not in his FBI suit mode. Off-duty Mulder had a boyish charm that made just looking at him hurt with pleasure. He was wearing what she thought of as his black knight outfit, although she'd rather die than admit to anything so chimeric. He wore his familiar long, black wool coat over that black lightweight turtleneck that she loved to see him in and which he wore so damn well; its so-soft fluid fabric flowing over his shoulder and chest. The rest of his lean body was poured into her favorite ratty black jeans and work boots. It had been a while between haircuts and the winter breeze tousled his hair a bit. Mulder was still a bit thin and just slightly pale from his recent illness, but God, he was so handsome she thought as she became aware that she was just smiling stupidly at him.

For his part, Mulder was aware that he was looking Scully with deep fondness, but he couldn't help it. It was always a challenge to fluster her and he had to admit he enjoyed it at bit. Almost as much as he enjoyed looking at her as she was right now. He loved Scully's casual side; she always looked freer and relaxed, almost girlish though she'd probably slap him over the head for that one. She wore some wonderfully form-fitting jeans with a simple white sweater. Her hair, so often pulled back at the office, fell loose about her lovely face, calling out to him to put his hands through it. "One might ask the same thing of you, Agent Scully," he said avoiding her question with deliberate casualness.

Clearly forgotten by both of them, Melissa suddenly started laughing. This was all too damn perfect in her book, she thought, and she certainly knew when three was a crowd.

Mulder turned to the giggling woman. "Melissa Scully," he greeted her affably. "I always suspected that underneath that calm new age exterior lurked a strange dementia.”

"Well, you would be the expert in that I guess, huh Mulder?" Melissa retorted good-naturedly as she got up from her swing also and walked towards him where he stood by the bench. Pausing, she took a moment to slowly look Mulder over, head to toe, with a frank appraisal that was completely unnerving to him and he covertly felt to see if his fly was open. She then smiled quite approvingly and nodded. What the hell was that all about, he wondered.

"So what are you ladies doing in the park on this fine winter's evening?" he asked again.

Melissa answered as she picked up her purse and a bag from the bench. "Lots of girl talk Mulder. We also went to brunch, missed a movie, ended up in a bookstore where Dana made a very interesting purchase," she said as she thrust the paper bag into his hands as her sister looked on in dismay.

"Mulder isn't interested in what I bought," Scully said with a poisonous look at Melissa. She would have snatched the sack back but Mulder was an FBI agent, trained to notice things like that.

Melissa just continued as though her sister hadn't spoken. "And now what I'm doing is going home. I'm cold, tired and bored with the company," she said flippantly, but with a smile to soften the comment.

"But ...we had plans," Scully whined slightly as she followed her sister who'd already started to head out of the park, leaving Mulder standing by the bench, confused, and quite literally left holding the bag.

"Plans change baby sister," Melissa said way too sweetly for Scully's comfort.

"Melissa, you can't just leave me here. You drove remember?" Scully whispered in a hiss to her retreating sister.

Melissa turned and leaned down to kiss her sister's cheek goodbye as she whispered lovingly in her ear, "Fate, Dana, has handed you an opportunity. You can screw it up by leaving with me or you can stay. It's up to you.”

Scully looked at her sister. "You know I'm staying.”

"That's my girl. Call me tomorrow or I'll have to kill you.”

Melissa straightened and looked back over Dana's shoulder at the tall man in the long black coat who watched them with undisguised curiosity. "Always a pleasure, Mulder, " she called to him as she turned and headed out of the park.

"Ah...bye," Mulder nodded, a little baffled by Melissa's abrupt departure although he was actually pleased she was leaving. He was more than content to have Scully all to himself, although he noticed as Scully turned back to look at him she didn't seem a bit happy to see him. He noted that she was staring at the bag in his hand and he could almost feel the tension radiate from her. Gleefully thinking that he had his partner cornered with some possibly embarrassing personal purchase, he turned in for the kill. "So what'd you get here Scully--50 ways to please with handcuffs?”

His smart-ass tone raised Scully's hackles a bit. Yuck it up, FBI Man, she thought as she sat down on the bench, crossed her legs, crossed her arms and stared at him. I'm gonna have the last laugh on this one.

"No Mulder, that's your shopping list," she said evenly, deliberately provoking his curiosity. "I'm afraid it's just a used magazine.”

"What--last month's Cosmo? Did you forget to do the sex quiz? Trust me, the answer is always D." Scully just tilted her head, giving him implicit permission to open the bag. Mulder turned the bag upside down and the magazine slipped out. It was backwards so he flipped it over.

His brow knitted a bit. "And you have the nerve to give me shit about what I read?" he asked as he looked at the sun-kissed surfer on the cover. "I didn't know you liked 'em blond and buff. All this time I was kinda hoping lean and spooky was your type," he said with his best lascivious grin, but only half-kidding in his heart. He noticed his goading didn't appear to phase his partner. In fact, she just smiled at him. Evilly.

He's damn good at that innocent look she thought as she realized he was trying to buy some time to con her. "Lean and spooky is my type, Mulder. In fact, there's a great example on page 41.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Mulder looked down and began to thumb through to the right page, not at all sure he wanted to see Scully's ideal. 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, Bingo. His hand froze in mid-page turn. As he stared at himself, he felt his mind slip into a coma right there on the spot. He looked up at her, opened his mouth to say something then shut it. For one of the few times in his life, Fox Mulder was without the witty remark.

"This isn't..." he finally started then stopped. He looked back down at the picture. What was he going to say? That this isn't what it looks like? What the hell else could it be except what looked like?

Mulder was clearly rattled and Scully loved it. "You're not gonna tell me that's not you, are you Mulder? I recognize the mole on your right cheek.”

"Scully, I - I - I...didn't..." Jesus, I'm stammering like an idiot, he thought. Like a liar.

"You didn't what Mulder? Willingly pose for it?" Scully said primly as though it was an X-File investigation. "I didn't see any signs of your being tied down. Although, you have intimated to me on several occasions that you do like that sort of thing.”

Mulder looked up to meet Scully's eyes and noted her expression. He'd heard about the cat that swallowed the canary thing and this was the first time he'd ever seen it on Scully. Lord, she was enjoying this, of course she was, she had no idea of the story behind it.

Mulder glanced again at the picture and now that the initial shock had passed, his brain started to function again and a deep sense of discouragement washed over him.

Fuck--he'd forgotten all about this. He'd tried to disconnect all his memories of Phoebe and he'd managed to pack this incident up and put it away. It had been rather easy, considering there were so many bigger things to try to forget.

Phoebe had taken the photo just as he'd woken up after a long night of the most raucous sex they'd ever had, a night that had started out on the Arthur Conan Doyle memorial and had worked its way across town to Phoebe's ancestral home. They'd exhausted themselves and he'd thought himself in love. More importantly, he'd thought that she was too. When she'd woken up, she'd said she wanted a photo to remember the evening by. He'd laughed and been somewhat secretly pleased that she'd wanted a picture of him like that. Then he'd forgotten all about it. Never even knew she'd developed the photo because within a week it had all turned to shit

A few days after that night, he'd been on his way to her place to surprise her. Flowers in hand, gift in pocket, heart on sleeve like a total lovesick geek. It might have been a memorable romantic evening if he hadn't found her in bed screwing some other guy so loudly, he'd heard them through the door before he opened it. Worse, he'd heard her saying to someone else all the exact same things she'd said to him just a few days before.

Phoebe hadn't understood why it bothered him, after all she'd told him, it wasn't like they were in love with each other.

God, he'd been so lonely and wanted to believe so badly that she'd cared that he hadn't realized for a moment that he was just a diversion for her. A pleasant way to kill some time between classes. Phoebe went into a quiet rage when he'd told her he couldn't play the game anymore, a move on his part that proved to be a big mistake.

Mulder flipped the magazine over and looked at the date; it was just after he'd broken it off with her. He shook his head a bit. So, this was just more of Phoebe's revenge. Certainly, as her other little escapades in public humiliation after their break-up indicated, a little thing like a forged photo release form wouldn't have stopped Phoebe Green. The laugh she must has had behind his back. He thought back to a year ago when she'd told him that enough time had passed and that he should forgive her "youthful indiscretions." Oh, silly me, he thought derisively. All this time, I just thought she was talking about how she'd screwed around behind my back and then proceeded to screw with my head. She was probably talking about this too.

Mulder sank down dejectedly on the bench next to Scully. Slowly, he closed the magazine and slid it back into the bag then dropped it on seat next to him. Crossing his arms, he stared out over the bay as long-buried resentment began to churn. Somehow, this newly discovered betrayal, although long ago perpetrated, cut Mulder deep for it was just plain petty and mean. Beneath even what he knew Phoebe to be capable of, and she'd been capable of a lot.

Shit, like I needed this today, he thought, Scully's probably thinking that I sent this in. God, I can only imagine what else must be going on in her head.

What Scully was thinking was that Mulder's reaction wasn't exactly what she'd anticipated. What she'd expected was a certain amount of embarrassed chagrin at having been caught being young and silly once. However, it was obvious she'd turned over a very different rock and that there something darker at work there behind Mulder's closed expression. And she knew that expression so well; it was the one he got when he felt a situation had slipped out of his control. God, he really wasn't feigning his surprise. He clearly hadn't even known that the picture was in there. How could that be?

"Mulder?" If her heard her, he didn't acknowledge it so she tried again. "Mulder, you didn't know that photo was in here?”

More silence, but after a bit Mulder just shook his head slightly, still looking off into the distance., refusing to meet her eyes.

"Phoebe Greene took the picture, right?" After a moment, he nodded, but still didn't look at her.

Scully looked at his profile, reading his emotions, usually an easy job because his face was so very expressive. And while she probably couldn't name Mulder's favorite color, she was almost never wrong about what he was feeling. Looking at him she saw clearly that Mulder wasn't embarrassed--he was angry; he was hurt.

Scully tried to make amends. "Mulder, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. The picture--"

"It's not the picture," he said suddenly, sharply.

She tried again, "I'm sorry--"

"Stop apologizing, Scully!" He glanced over at her just briefly. "It's not you. It's not the picture.”

"What then? What's bothering you?”

She saw Mulder hesitate before answering her. "It's the intent behind the picture," he finally said.

"I don't understand.”

He let out a deep sigh. Mulder could tell that Scully wasn't going to leave this alone and that somehow _not_ talking about it would turn into a bigger deal than talking about it. With her sharp mind, she'd already figured out the Phoebe Green connection. He shook his head ruefully and smiled just slightly. Occasionally, he wished that Dana Scully was just a little more stupid.

But of course, she didn't understand though. How could she? He'd done his best to shut Scully out on the subject of Phoebe Green and kept them separated a year ago as best he could while he'd tried to sort out his own damn feelings on the whole matter. Seeing Phoebe again had thrown him completely off balance as he sought to understand what he was feeling about the whole thing. What kept coming back to him was the fact that what he'd felt for the so-called love of his life paled in comparison to what he felt for his partner of just a few short months. In the past, Phoebe had always held a great physical and sexual power over him and yet, he'd felt more desire when Scully just touched him accidentally. That truth had wholly solidified when he'd kissed Phoebe. Much to his amazement, he'd felt nothing except that he really wished it had been Scully instead. Later, when he'd once again found Phoebe in the arms of someone else, he'd not felt even the slightest pang of jealously, just disgust. Not at Phoebe, but at himself and all the time he'd wasted on her.

Not that he'd ever told any of this to Scully, of course. He knew she'd seen him kiss Phoebe and he'd never offered her an explanation because it would have forced him into territory that he just wasn't prepared to enter. He knew that his rather schizo behavior while he was busy screwing around coming to his now-obvious conclusion would have given Scully little reason to think anything other than he was easily led about by his nose, or rather, his dick as far as Phoebe was concerned.

He glanced over at Scully again. She was sitting there patiently, waiting for her answer. Her eyes had that soft look that always melted him down. He'd seen that look once before concerning Phoebe. Scully had been there too after his disgrace at the hotel fire. She'd taken over from the Paramedics, taken him to his room, undressed him and put him to bed almost like a mother would a child. She was still there when he awoke just a bit later, her eyes gently concerned, and her compassion clear and strong.

He'd felt like such a failure that he could hardly meet her gaze. But at the same time, he'd realized that he felt safe. Not physically safe, but emotionally sheltered. She'd seen him be powerless and vulnerable and it was OK because he knew in his heart that it would never even occur to her to view his weakness as something she could use and exploit. When she'd asked what happened to him, he'd felt comfortable letting her see his anger and disappointment at himself because he trusted her. She'd certainly more than earned the right to a few more answers now.

"I don't know how much you remember of Phoebe when she was here last year--"

Scully gave a small laugh. "I don't think she thought much of me."

Mulder shook his head. "No. On the contrary Scully, she was threatened by you. You're smarter than she ever was and you're a better investigator. You're the one who solved that case. Not her, not me. Phoebe Green doesn't like being bested by anyone, man or woman.”

If his face wasn't so melancholy, Scully would have taken more pleasure in his compliment. She nodded, encouraging him to go on.

"Anyway, you probably noticed Phoebe's rather bizarre sense of humor," he continued.

"I didn't find the bomb scare practical joke particularly funny.”

Mulder nodded, remembering his partner's first introduction to Phoebe. "Exactly. Well, this--" he waved his hand in the direction of the bag, "is more Phoebe's sense of humor. What you have here is just photographic evidence of just one of the more pathetic misjudgments I've made in my life.”

"How do you mean?”

Mulder slumped back on the bench, crossing his arms, and closing his eyes. He really didn't want to wander down memory lane but there was no way off this path without shutting Scully out and he didn't want to do that either. He had things to tell her and he might as well start with this.

"Back at Oxford, you see, I was taking my relationship with Phoebe way too seriously. I didn't know that what I thought was love, was really just a rich girl's folly and a way to amuse herself. I hadn't realized I was just one of many players in her games. When I finally discovered that I'd been sharing the woman I thought I was in love with--the woman I thought was in love with me--with several others I backed away. I stopped playing the game.

"Well, apparently what I didn't realize was that nobody broke it off with Phoebe Green before she was goddamn good and ready. She couldn't believe my impertinence and wasn't about to take that kind of crap from a provincial dweeb such as myself. So, I guess she decided that I needed to be punished for my boorish behavior.”

"What happened, Mulder?" Scully asked gently, afraid he would stop talking.

"Nothing dramatic really, it was mostly a whispering campaign of sorts. Some based on truth, some not." Mulder stretched his legs out and looked at his boots as he remembered the weeks that followed the break-up when Phoebe's misinformation campaign was in full swing on the Oxford grounds before he continued. "She shared things around school that I'd told her in confidence. And while I hadn't recovered my other memories of Samantha's abduction yet, I still had nightmares occasionally about her disappearance that had bits of the memory in them. Phoebe knew about them and felt the need to share that too." He glanced briefly over at her. "Let's just say that Quantico wasn't the first place I heard the name, 'Spooky' "

Scully watched as Mulder looked back away and wrapped his heavy coat more securely around himself as though suddenly chilled as he sat up straighter on the bench. When he continued his voice was softer. "I found out that she'd amused some of her friends at a party by reading my notes and letters to her aloud," he said. "All had quite the laugh at my sentiments I understand. Certainly, along the way, the break-up had become her idea because I was, among other things, weird, a lousy lay, and a bourgeois American hick – and although she felt really sorry for me, I was just too fucking pathetic and needy to put up with.

"Finally, after a few months of hearing whispers and laughs as I walked down a corridor or having conversation stop when I entered a room, she finally lost interest and moved on. My guess is that this photo was just Phoebe's way of screwing with me back at home too, she was nothing if not thorough." Mulder bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together as he shrugged a bit. "Like I said, it was just little stuff.”

Little stuff? Scully was incredulous as she looked at his back. Jesus Christ, what were the big things if emotional and sexual betrayal along with the breaking of confidences and public ridicule were the little things? She didn't see the anger there any more, only a kind of resignation. She suspected there was more to the story, but didn't ask. Even Mulder had his pride and she'd leave him that. She didn't need to know any more. She knew enough.

Well, you finally got your answer about Phoebe and Mulder she thought. But it wasn't the answer she'd been so sure of. It had been malice, not love, that made Phoebe publish the photo. To strike back at him, Phoebe had taken private moments away from Mulder and made them public, made fun of them, demeaned his feelings. Damn that bitch to everlasting hell, she thought, her mother-bear anger nearly paralyzing her. He'd loved her, trusted her and she threw that gift away. Scully would have given anything if Mulder had once looked at her as he had Phoebe in that photo. What was wrong with that woman?

She shook her head though. But then again, damn me too. Loving someone who didn't love you back was the worst feeling in the world and she'd just managed to dump the whole ugly mess back onto Mulder's lap because she'd been jealous. If she hadn't been so eager to rub it in his face in it, he wouldn't have to think about it all again or know of this additional hurt. She sighed inwardly. All because she'd been angry with Mulder for daring to love another woman years ago. God, it's like she somehow expected him to be faithful to her years before they'd even met. How the hell did she have the nerve to accuse Mulder of being irrational?

They were quiet together a while and then suddenly she heard his familiar mirthless laugh. "What?" she asked, leaning towards him.

Mulder's thoughts had been running in a wild stream of consciousness passing rapidly through the years until they had settled onto an ironic fact that had cause the sudden outburst. He wasn't sure he if could tell Scully. But then again, who better to tell than Scully. "I was just thinking," Mulder paused, knowing that he was walking out on an emotional minefield. "That all those years ago Phoebe's intention was to expose me, no pun intended, as a fool in front of my friends. Only she didn't know....”

"Didn't know what Mulder?”

"She didn't know that I didn't have any friends to be embarrassed in front of." He paused again, "But you know Scully, there's a still beautiful irony here that Phoebe would have loved.”

"What would that be?”

"That her little jest lay about completely unappreciated for 10 years," Mulder turned back to look at her again, catching her steady gaze and holding it, "until you--the only friend I have in the entire fucking world--finally laid eyes on it." His laugh was short and embittered as he looked back down at his feet. "Coincidence, Scully? I think not.”

Scully's heart was deeply touched at his harsh words. OK--so it wasn't exactly Robert Browning, but it was still beautiful Mulder-poetry to her ears. She reached over and took Mulder's hand, intertwining their fingers as she ran her thumb gently over his smooth skin.

For a moment Mulder looked at her small hand enclosed in his, amazed at the tender feeling in his gut that just the touch of her fingers brought. Then he raised his eyes back to hers to see that she was smiling gently at him--he saw that, in fact, there was something very seductive in her eyes as they searched his. The bitterness faded and his demeanor softened. God, why couldn't it have been her all those years ago. All that wasted time. But maybe he had to live though Phoebe to recognize what Scully gave him. He searched her eyes, suddenly remembering her earlier remark about preferring lean and spooky. God wouldn't it be something if that were true, he thought.

But maybe he had to live though Phoebe to recognize what Scully gave him. The way she was looking at him, it was beginning to look as though it just might be true.

As Scully looked at him, she smiled just a little, then leaned over against him, pressing her shoulder to his. "Well, at least it was seen by the friend who could appreciate its beauty," Scully said to him lightly, softly., as though sharing a secret. To both her amazement and delight, she saw Mulder's face flush just a tad as he smiled in self-conscious pleasure at her remark., his mood visibly lifting.

"Well at least I provided you with some entertainment," he said easily, loving the both feel of her hand and the feel of her affection in her voice. "So," his tone now teasing, "can I expect the e-mail system of the FBI to be running amok with this little gem come Monday morning?”

Scully laughed and playfully bumped her shoulder up against his. "What--and make all the other male agents suffer from the comparison? Good God Mulder, that could completely devastate FBI office morale.”

Mulder finally laughed with genuine humor this time. Scully could always make him laugh, sometimes she would just say things unexpected like that and they always caught him off guard and delighted him. "Thank you, but you have to remember that picture is way old. The contents of the package have settled during shipment so to speak," he said back to her.

"I don't know Mulder, from what I've seen very recently, I bet I could still bounce a dime off your butt.”

As their smiles and light banter faded, Scully continued, serious now. "Mulder, about the magazine; I'm so sorry that it brought back such an awful time. I didn't--"

Mulder cut off her apology with a wave of his free hand, "It doesn't matter, Scully, really--"

"Bullshit, Mulder," Scully interjected sharply because she was going to get this said. "It matters to me. Everything you think or feel matters to me. Everything that hurts you matters to me." She paused and her voice became softly insistent. "God, Mulder don't you know that by now?”

Mulder swallowed hard as her words got inside him and held on. He mattered to Dana Scully. He'd known that somehow, but hearing her say it evoked a peacefulness inside. Something was happening here on this park bench and he realized that they each were dancing about the feelings. It wasn't happening as he'd planned, but then again, when the hell had any of his life worked out the way he planned. But he also realized that Scully apparently thought that he was feeling bad over Phoebe Green not loving him and he almost laughed aloud at the travesty of her misconception. You coward, he berated himself, are you gonna fix this or are you gonna sit here on your ass until eventually you do finally manage to get yourself killed and you never get to tell her. One more look into her eyes and he opted for fixing it even though he was terrified.

"I know, Scully." He tightened his grip on her hand. "I do know that. I just meant it doesn't matter because I realized long ago how twisted up it was with Phoebe." Mulder leaned towards Scully, shaking his head, "I mean, she and I were never friends; it was never once in all the time we were together like...like how you and I are. When I said it doesn't matter, I meant that it doesn't matter because I know now that Phoebe doesn't know shit about love and never has. But I guess I hadn't figured that out before was because I really didn't have a clue either. I'd had so very little to compare it to. And then..." His voice faded and he looked away quickly.

"And then what, Mulder?" Scully asked, tugging just slightly on his hand.

"And then you came into my basement office two years ago and I finally got it all straight in my head." He paused again briefly. "Scully, I told you a moment ago that you're the only friend I have in the world." Mulder looked back and fixed her straight on with his intense gaze. "Well, you're also the only woman I've ever really been in love with.”

The unexpected honesty of Mulder's words had the effect of silencing Scully as the emotions flooded her. And now, she had to look away from his penetrating gaze as she took a deep breath to slow her heart and tried to get her mind to speak the words without her voice cracking.

But as Scully looked away in ensuing stillness, Mulder realized that the part where she was supposed to throw herself into his arms hadn't happened. He became embarrassingly and acutely aware of the fact that he'd said way too much and that it was time to get the hell out now and desperately pretend on Monday that none of this conversation ever happened. He slowly released his grip on Scully's hand, picked up the bag up off the bench and held it out to her as he stood to go. "I guess this belongs to you.”

Oh God, she thought in a panic, say something you idiot, he's running. Mulder had confessed a lot for him; she couldn't let him think he was out on that limb alone.

"No, Mulder," she said suddenly, stopping him. She shook her head as she took the bag from him. "This doesn't belong to me at all." She raised her eyes to the troubled hazel of his gaze, taking in every aspect of his exquisite, masculine face, hoping he was seeing everything she'd done her best to keep as hidden for two years. She tried with little success to keep her voice from shaking. "It belongs to Phoebe. This was intended to hurt the only man in this entire fucking world that I've ever loved and I want no part of it.”

Suddenly she stood and walked quickly past Mulder, who was now the one frozen in place, to a nearby trash can where she took a moment to bury the bag deep within before turning back to face him. It was dark now with only the park lamps giving off a warm glow, but she could still see his eyes, she could see that he was listening so intensely that he surely must be able to hear her heart beat from where he was standing.

"Mulder, when Phoebe was here a year ago, I saw you kiss her when you danced and... and I wished back then that it had been me instead of her. Then today, when I saw how you looked at her in that photo, I wanted it to be me that you looked at like that all those years ago. Not her--me. I know it's not rational, Mulder. I know that. But it's what I felt because I love you. I wished it had been me from the beginning.”

Mulder thought his heart just might crack open as her words seeped inside. Jesus Christ--Dana Scully just told him that she loved him. Twice. How the hell had that happened? Unable to find anything lucid to say back at the moment, he simply reached his hand out towards her and called her name softly, beckoning her to come to him. In two steps, she took his hand and he pulled her into his arms and up against him. Mulder held her as close to him as he could and still allow her to breathe. Just held her and felt her arms encircle his back as she laid her head against his chest, feeling the length of his body pressed to hers.

"I wish it had been you too, Scully, " he told her softly, "you don't know how much." He felt a surge of energy flow through him and like a bad music video, he picked her up off her feet as he experienced the foreign feeling of elation. Wow, this unfamiliar love-thing was making him dizzy, he thought as he took a couple steps backwards and sat down in one of the swings holding Scully facing him on his lap, her legs dangling behind him. Scully wound one arm around his neck as her other rested gently against his chest. She had the slight advantage on him, for if he moved his arms from around her waist, she'd slide off his lap. He was trapped, and he loved it.

Scully realized why he'd placed her on his lap. She could look directly into his eyes as Mulder silently spoke his full heart to her. His gaze to her was warm and full of solemn honesty. He gave her the picture that she wanted, the one that would live in her own heart and obliterated all others from her mind for this picture was based on knowledge and truth and it was only hers.

"Scully?" Mulder leaned forward and spoke quietly in her ear.

"What Mulder?”

"I love you.”

"Oh, thank God, because I love you too.”

OK, he thought. It was out there now. They'd each really said it, there was no taking it back. This was really strange.

Mulder smiled as he saw Scully slowly moisten her lips as though in anticipation of something delicious. Oh God, Scully's going to kiss me, he thought stupidly as she caressed his cheek and then his jaw line with her fingers and then nuzzled in against his neck before she drew back just a bit and looked at him. She touched his lips with her fingertips first, tracing and smoothing gently over them, before moving her hand back to his hair. He could feel her warm breath and he closed his eyes just as she slowly brought his lips softly to her in a gentle first kiss. Oh God. Oh God.

With closed eyes, Mulder simply allowed the soft caress to happen, savoring the sweet moment and the chill that shot though the pit of his stomach at the sensation. In the darkness, he felt Scully trace the curve of his full lower lip with her tongue, as he now moved forward into the tender kiss. He felt her bottom lip move up to brush against his upper one, tugging at it slightly then sliding the tip of her tongue just inside the curve as he parted his lips for her.

Taking a slow breath, Mulder gently drew her tongue within his mouth, caressing it with his own before letting it retreat. He followed back into her mouth, tasting her heated sweetness for the first time. Scully moved to accommodate his caress, to open more to him, bring him deeper. By unspoken mutual consent, the kiss moved on to a harder, more desperate edge, going on endlessly and deeper with years of hard longing and craving behind it. He held on to her slender body, moving his hands up her back and pressing her head to his until finally, Mulder had to come up for air.

As he nuzzled his head into the curve of her neck, he was quiet a moment as his breathing evened out and he realized that Scully had slipped her small shaking hand over his heart during the best kiss he'd ever been given. This alone was way more than he ever believed he could have and yet he knew there was more awaiting them. He could hardly understand the extreme fortune given to him at this point of his life.

Scully sighed a warm, satisfied sound as she felt him place a trailing row of kisses over her collarbone and into the hollow of her throat. Then she heard his soft voice. "How the hell can you love me Scully? I'm such a fucking mess," he asked even as he took immense pleasure in the soft noises, she made low in her throat at his touch. "Are you sure it's not just pity?" There was deliberate laughter in his voice.

"Oh, Mulder," she breathed softly into his ear, feeling the shiver run thorough his body she pulled even closer against him. Mulder's tone was deliberately light, but Scully realized his question was deadly serious. She drew back slightly to look him in the eyes and smiled as she trailed her fingers through his soft hair. He's ever the truth seeker, she thought with deep affection; I can't start lying to him now. She realized that she needed to share a secret with him; the one men didn't know about, didn't even suspect in most cases.

She touched his face, running her fingers over the beautiful planes, feeling his lips graze her fingertips as she did so, saw him smile slightly when he felt her tremble, even as he held her gaze and waited patiently for his answer. "Mulder, there's some pity in every woman's love," she told him gently but firmly as she continued to sooth her fingers along his strong jaw line. " I mean, what kind of person would I be if I knew of what hurt you and felt nothing? I'd be no different than those who seek to do you harm. All women feel a little sorry for the men they love. I'm no different.”

Now Mulder, like most men, had obviously been unaware of this universal truth of women and she saw the confusion knit his brow for a moment as he pondered this news. "All women?" he questioned finally.

Scully just arched her own brow and nodded to him in affirmation. She could see the concept click into place in his mind, where it was turned over and examined closely for defect until, finally, his male-ego deemed it acceptable. His Mulder-humor returned, and he leaned in next to her ear again. "So, what you're saying is that you love me because I'm a mess?”

Scully laughed gently with him as he laid his head down against her chest and tightened his arms around her. "It's not the only reason, no," she told him. "Mulder, you're more than I've ever hoped for. You've shown me so much and you've helped make to me more than I ever thought I could be." Scully caressed the rough stubble on his cheek and the smoothness of his brow. God, she couldn't stop touching him, even in small ways and the anticipation of the touch of his lips and body nagged at her, but she had to make him understand and believe her. "I take such pride in you, Mulder. You have an honor that I've trusted in and felt protected by. There isn't a human being alive that I respect more because I know of the prices you've paid for your refusal to compromise your integrity.”

"But you were almost one of those prices, Scully. Following me on this search for answers might get you killed someday. I don't know if--"

She interrupted him by touching her fingers to his lips and shaking her head with affectionate impatience. "We're together in this now. I have my own stake in this now. You know that." She watched as he sighed and nodded his acknowledgement of that truth

Scully smiled a little and looked in his soft hazel eyes, amazed as always at how expressive they were and how they seemed to change colors with his emotions. She reached to kiss the sadness away, feeling him respond hungrily to her gentleness because Mulder hadn't had much gentleness in his life. She drew slowly back and touched his face again. "Mulder, I love you. We will find out what happened to your sister. We will find the truth of what happened to me. We're going to outrun, outsmart and outlive those who would stop us. I believe that Mulder. I promise you that I believe that.”

Mulder closed his eyes and turned his head away against the force of the first honest words of love he'd ever heard as he gripped her tightly against him. He lowered his face because if he knew if he looked at her, he was going to totally loose it, do something stupid like cry, and he didn't want to do that right now. Later maybe, but right now, if he didn't kiss her again, he was going to implode right there on the swings in the park. But just as he moved to lay claim to her lips again Scully apparently had one other thing to say first.

"And Mulder...?”

"What?”

"Just one more thing

"If Phoebe Green ever shows up in this town again," she said as she ran her fingers through his hair, still totally amazed that she could now touch him freely and all she wanted. “I'm gonna drive a stake right through where her heart should have been. She'll become an X-File, Mulder, and I'll get to do the autopsy. I'll teach that bitch to mess with my man's head.”

Surprised at Scully's vehement words, Mulder looked back up at her as she slowly nodded her seriousness to him. He then began to laugh, the genuine laugh that she loved and rarely heard from him. "You're my hero, Scully," he told her honestly.

"Damn right and you're mine." As Scully gazed down at him, his laughter faded into that charming, roguish grin that he always used so well to his advantage. The one that almost always got him what he wanted. The one that made her suspicious. What?" she asked. "What is it, Mulder?”

He began to lay kisses along the length of her throat, which he'd already discovered was something she really liked. Her head fell back with the simple luxury of his touch and to offer him more of her skin to work with. "I was just thinking," he said as he worked his way along, "that this day started out with me waking up alone, eating cold ravioli and drinking shitty coffee. It's going to end with me getting to make love to you." Mulder suddenly stopped his trail of teasing kisses, leaving her hanging and looked up at her with his best wicked grin, the light dancing in his hazel green eyes. "I am gonna get to make love to you, aren't I?”

Ah, two could play at this game., she thought. She'd teach him to tease her. She leaned forward and kissed the sensitive skin just behind and below his ear, discovering that she'd found one of his spots too as he shivered a bit. "Actually, Mulder," she whispered, as her breath in his ear shot shivers through him that she could feel. "I'd like you to fuck me 'til my ears bleed.”

She was rewarded with a deep growl of impatience from his throat. "ooooooo, Scully," he intoned, "that sounds like another X-File." Sliding his arms up her back and cradling her closely against him, he slid out of the swing and then gently lowered her slowly back into the soft white sand. Mulder indulged himself by smoothing back that always-errant strand of red hair off her forehead and tucking it behind her ear, mirroring a gesture he'd seen her do a hundred times and had always longed to do himself. And now he had, he thought and he couldn't believe that something so simple gave him a physical pleasure. Jesus, he wondered briefly, this just may kill me.

For just a moment, he lingered, just looking at her as he thought that this was all just going too damn well and an irrational fear that a plane would drop out of sky and crush then both ran through his mind.

Finally, Mulder took his last breath as a free man, leaned down and kissed Scully urgently, feeling a strength and satisfaction at the pleasured noise she made. He felt her hands move through his hair, pulling at him clearly wanting more and he searched the recesses of her lips and then deep into her mouth with his tongue. His aloneness was vanquished and craving her touch, he couldn't get close enough to her as he moved against her with a reckless edge and an overwhelming need to possess.

Mulder's kiss was everything Scully had imagined, long slow deep alternated with light tickling touching; almost making her giggle in playfulness and then back to serious depth. God, she loved to be right, she thought with deep satisfaction, and nothing in her life had ever felt as right as this moment. He moved relentlessly, keeping her breathless, his own breath warm and sweet as he lifted his lips only long enough to move into another position, to trail over her jaw line and under her ear and then back to her lips, pressing her deeper into the soft sand.

Mulder moved over her, entangling his long legs with hers as his long black coat fell over them like a blanket against the chill of the night. He braced himself over her as he cradled the back of her head gently in one large hand, his fingers entwined in her hair, holding on. Scully's hands were against his back, stroking and caressing as she responded up to his kiss. His slid his free hand under her sweater to pull the T-shirt she was wearing underneath from out of her jeans. Succeeding in that, he then slipped his hand up under the soft cotton, but as his chilled fingers encountered the deep warmth of her belly, Scully let out an involuntary, eeek-noise.

Mulder, who'd broken from her kiss at the sound, realized what had happened. "Opps, sorry" he said, laughing just a bit nervously, "that wasn't quite the reaction I was going for." He started to remove his hand, but Scully stopped him, catching his fingers with her own.

"It will warm up faster if you keep it where it is Mulder," she said softly. She moved his hand back up to her breast, slipping it inside the sheer cotton bra and holding it in place with her hand covering his. It indeed warmed up incredibly fast as he molded his hand over the softness and felt the nipple harden in response to his touch. "See?”

"Don't know, Scully, I think the cold did it some good." He caught her eye and she nodded in mutual amusement. He bent down in for another breath depleting kiss, as she dimly thought just how perfectly his hand fit her entire breast. Oh Jesus, this was going to be fun, she thought.

"I knew Mulder," she said when he'd lifted his lips a moment.

"Knew what, Scully?" Mulder said absently, concentrating on sucking on her earlobe.

"Knew that you'd be so damn good at this.”

Mulder lifted his head to look into her eyes and smiled that rare smile, the one that only came when he was deeply, genuinely happy. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen it before today. Today she'd lost count of how many times she'd seen it. "Trust me, it helps to have found the right partner," he told her.

Scully reached down to spread her hand over the heated and expanding center of his jeans. She heard the ragged intake of his breath as she cupped and massaged the rapidly hardening mass through the rough material, spreading her fingers and moving in a soothing rhythm. Seeing his eyes close in pleasured concentration, she popped the top button and hurriedly tried to find the tag of his zipper as he dipped his head into the curtain of hair at her neck while he made a thrumming noise of deep satisfaction.

She had just succeeded in slipping her hand inside the waistband of his jeans when Scully suddenly felt Mulder's entire body tense in a way that had nothing to do with what her fingers were doing. His warm lips suddenly left her neck, leaving a shock of cold air. What? Scully opened her eyes and saw Mulder looking above her head.

"Ah, good evening, Officer," she heard him say.

She tilted her own head back as best she could and saw one of Alexandria's finest standing over them. Even with her upside-down view of things she could see the stern older face that had caused Mulder's hand to go dead still on her breast. In her urgency, Scully had almost completely forgotten that they were in a public park, as had Mulder apparently. She bit her lip to keep from laughing, as she slowly extracted her hand from inside Mulder's underwear.

"You know folks," the cop offered dryly, "the city of Alexandria has many fine hotels.”

"Ah, yes sir." Mulder paused a moment, then glanced briefly back down at Scully then back at the cop as he gingerly removed his own hand from under her sweater. "Would you happen to know where the closest one is and whether it takes American Express?”

Scully hid her face in Mulder's neck, but to her relief the cop, apparently having been young and in love himself once, laughed. "Let's just move it along--OK?" was all he said and then moved on himself.

"Yes Sir. Thank you." Mulder turned his head to watch the officer walk away a moment then looked back at Scully. When their eyes met the laugher started. "It doesn't look like there's going to be any ear bleeding in the park, Scully," he said as he slowly rose from her and up to his feet. She felt a rush of cold replace his warmth and she already felt deprived. As Mulder reached for her hand, he noticed her shiver. As he pulled her to her feet, he took her back into the shelter of his arms, wrapping his coat around the two of them and resting his chin on the top of her head.

"Thank God for long coats" Scully sighed, snuggling back against him.

"Yes," Mulder said wryly. "It may also help to keep me from being arrested.”

Scully laughed softly as she pressed against him deliberately, hearing his soft exclamation as she did so. "Yes, I noticed. I may be able to help you with that too.”

"I was kind of hoping you'd volunteer." Mulder looked down at her and kissed her again. When he released her, he brought his hands up to trail down the sides of her face to hold her. As he looked down, she saw a confused emotion pass through his eyes.

She tightened her grip around his waist, "What Mulder, what is it?”

"I guess, I just can't get used to the fact that I can touch you because I want to, because I feel like it," he said. "I don't have to stop myself. You have no idea how many times I had to stop myself.”

Scully smiled up at him. "Of course, I do Mulder, it was probably as often as I had to stop myself.”

"Yeah?" he grinned back at her.

"Oh yeah.”

Mulder dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Scully, where should we go since groping you up in the park isn't going to work out? One of Alexandria's fine hotels or your place?”

"Let's just go to your place, Mulder, it's closer.”

Mulder was a bit dismayed. He'd imagined making love to Scully in virtually every imaginable place; her bed, his couch, the office desk, the shower, the middle of her cream-colored carpet in her living room. Hell, even that rainy graveyard in Oregon seemed like a good idea. But when faced with the reality of quite literally taking Scully home, he felt a reluctance because as much as he was almost dying on his feet with need, he didn't feel like it was home. "We can go somewhere nicer," he offered.

"I want to go to your place.”

"We can go to your place or a really nice hotel instead.”

"Mulder, I want to go to your place," she just insisted again.

"But why?”

"Because it's where you live, Mulder and I want you to let me in where you live.”

"But..." He paused as he thought about what she said, knowing she wasn't talking about the physical apartment and he gave in. "If that's what you want Scully.”

"Of course, that's what I want Mulder," she answered firmly as though he were a silly child asking a stupid question.

Mulder took her hand in his. If she wanted to, they'd go to his place, where maybe it just might feel like home for once. He had the feeling that anywhere with Scully would feel like home. "Where's your car?" he asked.

Now Scully was the one who paused. "Melissa drove.”

His eyebrows lifted. "She just left you here?”

"Well, we walked a long time today and just ended up here. I was thinking about things I had to tell you and I guess Melissa thought that today was as good a time as any.”

Mulder nodded. Melissa just might be smarter than he and Scully put together, he thought.

"We can just take your car Mulder.”

It was his turn to smile. "I walked here too.”

"From your place? Mulder, you shouldn't have pushed yourself like that," she admonished him, Scully's physician mode temporarily taking over.

"Trust me Scully, I've never felt better in my life," he smiled a bit lasciviously at her. After a moment’s pause, he continued. "I felt like walking. I was thinking about some things I had to tell you and I ended up here.”

They looked at each other and simultaneously both shook their head and laughed. They were a pair.

"What are the odds of us finding a cab?" she asked.

"It's a Sunday night in February with a storm coming in and considering the way things usually run for us, I'd say not good.”

"It's just always going to be an uphill battle for us isn't it Mulder?”

"Looks that way. Come on, we've got some walking to do.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Mulder's Apartment**

**Alexandria, Virginia**

By the time, they'd reached his apartment building a slight tension had built between them. They'd not talked much and they'd each gone inside their heads. They were thinking too damn much, Scully realized, but she was unsure how to make it better. In his hallway, Mulder dug his keys out of his pocket and promptly dropped them though whether from cold or nervousness, he wasn't sure. They both bent down for them with Scully capturing them first. Silently she stood back up and extended her hand palm up with the keys in them. As Mulder scooped the keys up, his fingertips grazed across her palm and just that small touch made her tremble a bit. Mulder saw it and grinned.

He bent to capture her mouth with his in a deep, sweet kiss, backing her up against the unopened door, pressing into her. He knew he could probably unlock the door better if he could take his eyes and hands off her for two seconds and look at what he was doing, but that was two seconds too damn long. Instead, he reached to grab Scully's rear to pull her up and against his body, as he moved against her with a slow rhythm.

Even as Scully pressed into Mulder's body, she heard someone clearing their throat too loudly. She looked over Mulder's shoulder to see one of his neighbors, a very wide, older woman she didn't recognize. She'd gotten off the elevator with her groceries and was now staring at them in nasty disapproval as they were blocking the narrow hallway with their public display of affection. Mulder didn't even look up as he leaned even harder in against Scully to allow the biddy to pass. The crone gave Scully the evil eye as she pushed past them making sure that they heard her very loud, obnoxious "tsk" of censure as she did so and the small devil that lurked in Scully's heart got loose.

"Sir, I did tell you that it was an extra $50 if you want to keep my panties too, didn't I?" she asked Mulder loudly breaking his kiss momentarily. She was rewarded with a slight gasp from the old bat as her door shut down the hall. Scully looked up to meet Mulder's eyes concerned for just a second that he might be ticked-off. After all, he did have to live here.

But he was smiling in amusement as she'd suspected he would be. "God, I love you," he whispered in her ear.

With one arm holding her close, he managed to finally get the door opened with the other, and pulled her quickly inside, slammed it shut, threw the deadbolt and dropped the keys on the floor. The momentary uncomfortable tension was completely gone and just delicious anticipation remained.

Taking her hands and walking backwards in the darkness he pulled her towards the bedroom and she followed. Once inside, he let go long enough to turn on the small light on the nightstand. Scully had never really more than glanced in the usually dark room and as the soft glow from the light illuminated them, she vaguely noted that he had a large bed with large pillows and not much else besides the nightstand and a dresser by the window. She should probably take a moment to really look around, but she only wanted to look at Mulder who stood by the bed gazing at her with sweet expectation.

She approached him in two steps, stretched up to kiss him as he bent to meet her half way. Holding onto the lapels of his long coat, she pushed it up and off his shoulders, forcing him to let go of her long enough for her to drop it in a heap on the floor, which she then pushed over to the wall with her foot.

Backing him up a step, she decided to go for the shoes next. With one small push from her, he was sitting on the edge of the bed as she knelt between his legs. She felt his hand smooth through her hair as she untied the boots and pulled them off. Each made a clunk against the wall as she tossed them blindly over her shoulder, followed next by the socks.

Now she looked up at him. He met her gaze and saw her deep affection for him, saw that her anticipation matched his. She cupped her hands over his knees and raised herself to a kneeling position, running her hand slowly up his thighs as she did so. She leaned forward, lifted his sweater, and placed a soft wet kiss on his belly, wrapping her arms around his waist and feeling the hardness of his erection through his jeans against her breasts. She rocked slightly against him, easing back and forth, as she placed other wet kisses about his navel and followed the trail of downy hair below. With a deep sigh, Mulder lay back on the bed, his hands outstretched on either side grasping at the bedclothes.

Scully decided to tease him a bit by placing her hand over his jeans-encased hardness and alternating between ticking and deep massage. She traced the contours straining against the fabric, repeatedly as she worked her kisses down from his navel after dipping her tongue deep in its hollow. She finally gave him some relief by popping the top snap of his jeans and rolling the zipper down. Reaching up, she grasped the waistband of his jeans and tugged. They didn't move; Mulder had gone dead weight on her.

Scully smiled a bit. "Gonna need a little cooperation here Mulder," she requested.

Mulder returned from where ever he was just long enough to raise his hips just enough for her to slide the pants and underwear off in one deft motion where they too were tossed over her shoulder to join the rest of the heap against the wall. He thought absently that was a particularly smooth move on her part, but then he felt her warm, wet mouth close over him and he lost all sense of logical thought from there.

Mulder's head snapped back up. Oh sweet Jesus, he thought, struggling to maintain control as he also struggled to raise himself back on his elbows so he could watch the incredible sight of Scully giving him a blow job. He watched her tousled red-hair move, and felt her deep warmth not only on his cock, but also in his gut. Long and slow were her movements, not really driving him hard towards orgasm just yet. More like she was tasting, like she was savoring and memorizing. Like it was something she wanted to do instead of something she should do. The reality of the moment hit him after having fantasized it for so long. Jesus, it's Scully, he thought. My Scully, his mind corrected possessively. She wanted to be his just as he'd wanted to be hers.

His eyes closed as he felt her hands tighten over his hips, holding him as she began to slowly increase the pressure, pushing him now towards deep gratification. Oh God, it was going to be over too soon. God, how had he lived without her touch like this, he wondered dazedly during the few brief seconds Scully backed off to give him a break, keeping him from going over the edge just yet. Mulder blinked slowly as though getting his bearings and looked down at her, a smile coming to his face. His Scully.

Feeling his eyes on her, Scully looked slowly up the length of Mulder's body, still clad in black turtleneck, and his chest rising and falling rapidly with short breaths. She finally met up with Mulder's gaze; his eyes half-closed in satisfied bliss, his lips softly parted. He blinked slowly as he took a deep breath and smiled intimately at her, as her hands stroked him as her mouth had just done.

Meeting his eyes, Scully realized that besides the obvious bodily pleasure she was bestowing upon him, Mulder was also gaining a more extrinsic enjoyment from the fact that he was receiving that pleasure from her. Her touch and her mouth. So often, there was a careless anonymity to this act and the knowledge that it wasn't that way for Mulder filled Scully with tenderness for him and a feeling of heady power.

Her hand traced back over his thighs, over the long-healed bullet-wound scar and moved up to grasp the base of his cock, holding him steady as she moved the flat of her tongue up and down its length. She stopped to bring him fully and deeply into her mouth, feeling him respond with the tightening of his hips and the sharp intake of his breath. He was close, so very close, she thought. She could feel it as she continued her rhythms, increasing in speed and pull, as the noises he was making increased in volume.

Mulder watched and drew ragged breath as the pleasurable pressure grew from the ministrations of her lips and tongue. He felt each swirl of her tongue around the head of his cock. Every long, wet slide down and every firm sucking slide back up pushed the pressure mounting within closer and closer to release as her rhythm and intensity increased.

One of Scully's hands cupped and massaged his balls while her other hand found a heretofore unknown pressure point dimple just beneath his cock which she rubbed in tiny circles, that medical training coming in good for something besides dissection and Mulder found a pleasure he'd not known before.

Oh God.

It almost killed him, but he knew he had to stop her before it was too late. He was going to be gone in a moment and he had his own plans in mind. This long-held fantasy had come true, but he had others he wanted to indulge also.

Scully felt his hands in her hair, tugging gently as he sought her attention. "Scully," he beckoned softly, "Scully, come here. Please.”

She left the job unfinished and moved up to join him as he scooted back from both the edge of the bed and the edge of sexual pleasure. Seeing her questioning look, Mulder laid back against the big pillows on the headboard and pulled Scully up into his arms, bringing her face close to his. "I want to be inside you when I come," he said just before he kissed the lips that had just nearly driven him insane. "I want that," he insisted again, drawing Scully's tongue deep within his mouth and sucking gently, tasting the bits of his early juices on her lips before drawing away slightly with a sigh. "And by the way, you've got too damn many clothes on for me to do that.”

Scully laughed gently as she understood that he wanted his turn at her and went almost light-headed with anticipation. "Just one more thing and I'm all yours," she said teasingly. She grasped the edge of his black turtleneck and pulled it over his head, smiling at his well-tousled hair and his boyish grin that emerged from the fabric constrains. The sweater floated gently through the air to the ever-growing heap as she ran her fingers through his hair to smooth it before turning her eyes to look down his long-limbed body, finally fully naked in her eyes.

She lightly trailed her fingers over his belly, watching the muscles quiver and twitch. Oh, that was good. She looked her fill at him and Mulder lay there patiently allowing her to do so. After a moment she said something so softly that Mulder didn't quite hear it.

"What?”

She looked back up to his eyes. "I said, 'all mine' " she repeated with a wicked smile.

"Been that way for a long, long time, Scully," he told her as he pulled her back into his arms. He pressed her clothed body against his naked one as he reached down and started with Scully's shoes, silently thanking God they were loafers because he surely didn't think he had the composure to deal with laces. They both laughed at the thunking noise as they hit the wall and slid down to join their brethren on the clothing heap. Scully was then duly impressed with his dexterity as he managed to pull her socks off with his toes and keep his hands busy on her upper body at the same time. Who knew such a talent was there she wondered.

Mulder nudged her over onto her back and he slid one arm underneath her to cradle her against him still. His other hand skimmed down her belly to find the waistband of her jeans where he popped open the buckle on her belt and pulled it out of her belt loops in one efficient motion.

He missed the clothing pile with his toss because Scully, who had busied herself with touching wherever she could reach of his smooth skin, suddenly had fastened her mouth to his nipple and was suckling greedily. Ah, Sweet Jesus. The resulting electric jolt threw off his aim by several feet and for a moment, he was frozen in place.

Looking down, he watched as Scully, her eyes blissfully closed, gained pleasure for herself from the act too. She worked over his nipples with both her fingers and her mouth. Her wet, hot tongue washed waves of pleasure over him that were different than how her lips on his cock had felt, but no less powerful in an entirely startling way. Mulder's body couldn't decide if it was totally relaxed or tense to the point of snapping.

Mulder realized that she was going to make undressing her difficult because despite her promise that she was all his, she continued to attach herself to his body with her lips and hands where she could. Not that he minded, but he would have to do something about that because it was distracting him from his plans.

He did manage to look into her eyes as he popped the snap on her jeans, moved the zipper down, and was rewarded with her smile. His strong fingers worked their way into the tight jeans and underneath the panties into the hot moistness where his middle finger instantly found its spot. With the heel of his hand, he applied gentle pressure as he massaged her clit below with sure circular strokes. Mulder watched with pleasure as Scully's head dropped back as she clutched on to his arm rhythmically in tune with his motions, small soft cries coming from her throat. Yes, she was most definitely all his now he thought.

Mulder raised her up to him for a deep soul kiss that smothered her moans as he worked her responsive body, bringing her as close as he dared and then backing off. Stilling his hand, he placed his lips on the side of her neck and worked on applying the first serious hickey Scully had had since high school. A very small one, just enough to leave his mark. Just enough to say, "Mulder was here.”

Satisfied with the result, he returned to this matter, so to speak. The restriction of the jeans, which had once excited, now began to impede and he let go of her long enough to move to the end of the bed to tug her jeans down and off, tossing them aside.

Unlike Scully, Mulder hadn't managed to get the underwear in the same movement, probably because they were thoroughly plastered in place as he moved back up next to her on the bed. His fingers trailed up the inside of her slickened inner thighs, snagging the edge of the lacy garment and he slid them down and off. However, instead of tossing them aside with the other garments, he gathered them into a ball in his hand and inhaled deeply, memorizing her scent, feeling almost a slight rush and he felt himself harden even more if possible. "So, Scully, it's $50 bucks if I want to keep these?" he asked with his wicked humor.

She tilted her head slightly as though considering. "For you, Mulder, $25.”

"Well, then I'm keeping them." Scully watched as in one smooth motion Mulder leaned over her body, reached out and slid open the drawer of his nightstand, dropped the panties inside and slammed it shut before turning his attention back to her.

"Mulder you are completely insane." Scully laughed as he moved back over her.

"You make me insane," he said dropping a kiss on her forehead and then her lips. "And I'm beginning to feel seriously underdressed here.”

She arched one eyebrow at him. "Well, if you hadn't stopped for your little impromptu panty raid, we'd be a lot further along by now.”

He chucked low in his throat. Scully loved the sound. She loved to make him laugh, and the fact that she knew she could was a turn-on all on its own. Not that she needed any additional help right that moment. Mulder pulled her sweater off over her head, then the T-shirt and went to work on the bra that matched the panties, deftly unhooking it from the back and sliding it down her arms and all three items were unceremoniously flicked from the bed.

Mulder's hand rested on her flat stomach a few moments as he looked down at her, noting the contrast of his darker skin against her soft white. Unlike Scully, he'd never been afforded real opportunity to see her other than the one time she stood before him in that hotel room in Oregon, scared and shaking. He slowly moved his eyes down her body, loving everything he saw.

For the first time, Scully felt a little reticent under his frankly guileless study, concerned in the very back of her mind about stacking up against those glossy magazines and videos. Mulder lowered his head to kiss her breast for the first time, loving the nipple with his tongue and drawing it softly into his mouth, to suckle against her as she'd done to him and his arms slipped under her body again to pull her closer him. After a moment, he slowly moved his head up and kissed his way along her collarbone, each soft, moist touch loving and gentle. Mulder nuzzled his face into her hair and placed his lips next to her ear where she heard him sigh as he kissed her there also. "Oh Jesus, Scully, you're so beautiful," he whispered as though someone would overhear them. "I just knew you'd be this beautiful.”

Scully reached up and cupped her hand to his cheek, feeling the roughness where he hadn't shaved, loving the intense masculine feel of him. Mulder placed his hand over hers and moved her palm to his lips so he could kiss it softly. He parted his lips slightly and she felt his tongue tickle and caress her palm as she felt a tingle run through her. He released her hand and lowered his head back to her breast as Scully held him against her as he resumed his loving suckling treatment, as she reached to caress the length of his erection, hard enough to make his heart pound and his breath quicken.

He ran his hand down the length of her side; slightly tickling and eliciting a shiver from her before he moved his hand back down to tease her sensitive clit a little, his hand moving small hard circles. He looked Scully straight in the eyes as touched her, watching for her reaction as his fingers then dipped inside her wetness. She smiled so lovingly for him and she closed her eyes as he stroked his fingers deep into her. She made the most beguiling noise of pleasure and he most definitely needed to hear more of that. He moved over her body to kneel between her thighs, parting them further and moving to kiss and tongue her wetly all around except the sensitive area where she wanted his tongue the most.

Mulder tickled and teased her with his fingers and mouth as she writhed up against him. But he held her firmly in his hands. "Tell me how you like it," he entreated her between kisses and licks. "Tell me what's good for you.”

"Oh God, please" she pleaded with him. "Mulder, please," as her hands reached out, running through his hair. "More."

He backed off and gently nudged open her legs apart even further in preparation for him, bent back down and gave her one long deep lick. The sensation nearly jolted her off the bed. "Mulder!" she called out as she felt every muscle contract as she arched up to meet him. Mulder dipped in for series of short, hard, caressing tongue strokes against her clit, followed by another long, laving lick, then back to the hard strokes again. He found the rhythm that worked for her based on the sounds she making and the way she pressed up against his seeking tongue.

The roughness of his unshaven jaw against the tender skin on her thigh provided delicious contrast to the smooth gliding of his tongue. She felt his long fingers enter her, stroking deeply as the internal pressure mounted, rushing her towards the outcome. "More like that, Scully?" he asked, raising his head a moment.

"Yes. Please, yes." He tortured her sweetly with a few more long licks before settling in for the final onslaught and within just a few more moments, Scully came so hard for him that she arched up and clutched bedclothes as her head tossed back and forth across the pillow, making insensible noises. He could feel the inner tremors ripple from the nerve center under his tongue to the tips of her extremities. He was so close that he almost came himself as he watched the flush run her pale skin and felt her quaking.

He loved the sounds she made as he made love to her. Even in the deepest grip of sexual shuddering, Scully was an internalizer; she didn't make the histrionic shrieks that just reminded him of a cheap porno video. The pleasured sounds she made were low toned and primal, coming from her deepest self. He listened to her call out his name and felt her hands grip him and it thrilled him to know he was responsible for her intimate and intense reward, as he just lightly brushed his hand over her pubic area, still feeling the lessening muscle spasms that shook her body.

Mulder was also going out of his mind. Giving her pleasure had been a heady thing, but his own need began to overwhelm him. He crawled back up over her body to kiss her again, sliding his arms under her body and pulling her to him. And his kiss was devouring. As he filled her mouth with his tongue, she pulled it in hungrily, suckling instinctively. She felt the hardness of Mulder's erection pressing into her belly, rocking against her as he waited for her to come back to her body.

As she regained awareness, Scully forced her eyes to open as she felt him move against her, the heat of his body and need triggering her own instinctual need to have Mulder within. In fact, it screamed its demand for gratification. Now.

Scully wanted to watch every moment of Mulder's pleasure; she wanted to see him feel as she did. She pulled away from his kiss, "Mulder, please, I need you now," she entreated, as her hands reached for him. "Now."

As he slid down her body, Mulder felt her legs move to bring him in and he went gladly, sliding his length deep inside her body as he thrust forward. Their mutual deep moan at that complete first melding came innately and Scully watched as Mulder stopped and had to turn his head away a moment to gain control. "Jesus, Scully. I..." his voice trailed away.

"I know, Mulder." Scully ran her hands up the tense planes of his back, giving him a moment, but wanting him to reach that same place she had; feel that total loss reason. She rocked against him, urging him oh-so-slightly, that longing for completion begun but not yet fully realized.

Oh God, he thought, turning his face back to her as he began to move in long deep strokes, in and out of her body. Nothing in his life had ever felt a good as that first full push up inside Scully. Inside Scully, his mind repeated in awe, one of his last rational thoughts. Nothing had ever felt so good as that first stroke. Well, except maybe the second. Or the third. Mulder gave up comparing by the fourth as the primal instinct of driving towards satisfaction overtook him.

Scully watched blissfully as Mulder began to lose himself within her and she brought her knees higher to give him deeper access as he groaned his thanks, his thrusts becoming more forceful as she arched upwards to meet him and her head fell back. Scully felt herself begin to coil up again inwardly as his stroking movements filled her body, left her empty then filled her again. Over and over with increasing intensity. She moved her hands along his back with his movements, pulling him in, feeling the smoothness of his skin and his sweat.

She watched as Mulder moved above her and he was so beautiful, so unrestrained. His eyes were tightly closed in sexual concentration, his face turned slightly to one side, his breath coming deeply, mixing the sound of her name with other more guttural noises of gratification, building a cadence, like his strokes within her.

Scully strained to meet his need, to make it good for him as she tightened her inner muscles and reached up to touch his face. Mulder felt both and opened his eyes to meet hers, letting her know he was aware of her. "Scully," he called out lowly as he raised himself back, bracing himself. "God, you feel so good." He took her hand from his face and slipped it down between their bodies so she could feel him moving within her and her fingers worked with his on her body as he moved relentlessly against her. Suddenly he bent down and kissed her again with a deep resonance.

The stroking of his fingers and his body's desperate entry into hers had intensified the tightening of the glorious twisting coil within her, but it was his kiss that made it suddenly let go. The pleasure unwound like a spring, dancing though Scully's body as she went rigid a moment just as her second Mulder-induced orgasm overtook her and she had to pull her lips from his to breathe and call out his name as her head tossed from side to side. Mulder's fingers left the spot he'd been soothing and he slid his arms underneath her and lowered himself fully onto her body, his thrusting becoming quick and hard. Scully pulled him along, helping him towards what they both wanted. "Mulder, please. I need to feel you," she urged, "Please. Mulder, come for me, please.”

"Oh, God Scully. Yes." Mulder allowed himself several deeper full-length strokes and then curled up forward into her as his gut-deep spasms overtook him. He made a sound that Scully would have mistaken for a painful sob had she not known it was coming from the deepest of euphoric pleasures as his body seized up.

Looking into Mulder's face so close to hers, she could see he was, for a moment anyway, in that place where nothing ever, ever had felt that good, that right or that perfect. She'd given him that moment, she thought possessively. Deeply she felt the sharp contractions cause his body to shudder up inside hers and he moved against her mindlessly as he fell over the edge completely. She felt him spill over both emotionally and physically into her, calling out her name repeatedly in between cries of pleasure as the spasms shook him. Scully held him deep within her body with her legs, feeling his bliss.

As his tremors slowed, Mulder flattened softly down upon Scully with the total depletion of strength that comes of spent passion. The fulfillment of the longed-for physical expression with this woman causing his mind and his body to fall into the deep languor of tranquility. He was free-floating somewhere, he wasn't quite sure where though.

Scully's hand came up to cradle the back of his head now buried in the crook of her neck, stroking him gently. She looked down the length of his now-familiar body, his back polished with the slight sheen of sweat, the gentle curve of his butt where he was still buried deep within her, cradled within her legs. His own long legs and feet tangled in the bedclothes where he had found footholds for his earlier thrusting. She took his weight against her upper body gladly, feeling his heartbeat and the ragged breaths he took were warm against her neck. She'd never felt so good in her life. Never. She felt an overwhelming protectiveness towards him, a deep satisfaction in having given him such exhaustive pleasure as he'd given her hers. She felt a strange wondrous gratitude that this moment had finally happened. She was close to tears in her contentment. Right at that moment, she had it all.

As conscious thought returned to Mulder, she felt him begin to move to relieve her of his weight. She flattened her palms against his back and wrapped her legs more firmly about him. Mulder felt her resistance to his leaving and raised himself back on his elbows to look at her, saw the shine in her eyes and knew it matched his own.

"I'm too heavy for you, Scully," he whispered.

"Never," her voice catching a bit as she shook her head. "I love you." Mulder smiled and returned the words to her as he kissed her sweetly and gently; a soft, romantic almost first kiss. Their first kiss as a couple who were now lovers. At the end of the kiss, they both laughed gently at the thing they had just done together and Mulder had his answer as to whether Scully giggled. God, it was a wonderful sound. And God, it was so easy to say he loved her now when just a few hours ago he'd almost shaken with the fear of saying it.

He slowly withdrew from her body, slid his arms underneath her, and then rolled over onto his back up against the pillows so that Scully draped over him like a blanket. She laid her head against his shoulder and felt his hands on the small of her back, gently caressing her rounded bottom as his other hand came up to mesh into her hair and cradle her against him. His warm, moist skin felt luxurious beneath her and the smell of him and the sex was quite intoxicating. Their breathing fell into a slow mutual rhythm. It was in the few minutes of the calm following the storm that Mulder asked Scully the question that she knew was coming.

"Scully?”

"Hmmmm?”

"May I ask you something?”

Scully smiled against his chest. What is it with men? They always asked. Maybe not flat out, maybe not blatantly, but somehow, someway they always asked. It pleased her somehow that Mulder was no different. "Seven, Mulder" she answered.

"What?”

"Seven," she repeated. Scully shifted more comfortably against him. "You were going to ask me that 'on a scale of one to ten question' right?”

Shit, Mulder thought, how did she know? Was there anything about him that this woman didn't already know? "Well, yeah, I was," he acknowledged reluctantly.

"Well, the answer is seven." She closed her eyes, and while she didn't look up into his face, she could almost hear his mind processing the data.

Mulder pondered her answer a bit, trying to make it work out in his mind. Seven. Seven? No matter how he rationalized it, that just wasn't the number he was hoping for. Yes, it was better than a one which was probably some guy who was gone in 20-seconds and yes, it was better than a four which was probably something that involved batteries. So, he was just a few points above a good quality vibrator?

"Seven, Scully?" he asked again just in case he'd misunderstood and she'd really said eleven.

"Seven, Mulder.”

Shit. He shouldn't have asked. He dropped his head back on the pillow.

Scully raised her head as she moved up higher against him and he held her tight. "God, I love the feel of you" she told him, just before she opened her mouth and kissed him with all her heart, pressing against him as he held on, letting her plunder his mouth. When she lifted her lips slightly, she was already breathless and she could feel his heart beating under hers as she coaxed his head forward to whisper in his ear. "Mulder, I said 'seven' because before tonight I'd never even had a _six_ \- That...and I wanted to leave us something to look forward to over the years.”

Mulder's head fell back into the pillow as he laughed aloud. "You're never going to cut me any slack, are you Scully?" he asked as she shook her head with mock-regret. "Well, good" he said as stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Someone has to be the rational one.”

She laughed just a little. "You make me irrational, Mulder." Scully suddenly pulled back just a little and looked into his eyes, serious for the first time "I love it and yet it scares me at the same time. Just like looking forward does," she added softly.

Mulder nodded, delving into her with his eyes and luxuriating in the bone-deep contentment that the feel of her body draped down the length of his brought. "I know," he said wistfully. "Me too.”

With a sigh, Scully moved off from on top of him but remained curled up close against his body within the circle of his arms as she began to tickle the fine hairs around his nipples a bit. She felt a deep contented lethargy; the emotional turbulence of the day combining with physical expenditure had temporarily depleted her strength. Scully also mulled over the thought that simply sleeping with this man was as beguiling as making love to him. Well, almost, she amended, with a smile.

"Mulder, you quite wore me out," she said in a sleepy voice. She heard his gentle laugh again and felt his hand stroke against her back in silent agreement.

"Rest just a bit," Mulder suggested drowsily. "Then we can work on bumping that 7 up to an 8." He felt Scully smile against him as she nodded her absolute agreement with his plans. He looked down at her resting so securely in his arms and he felt at home, he felt safe, just as he always had with her. Except now they were lovers, Mulder thought. They'd been emotional lovers for so long anyway that he was still having a bit of trouble with the reality of all this, with the reality of it all finally coming full circle to physical lovers too. It was going to be strange at the office because he was no fool. He knew it was just a matter of time before they were in each other's face, vehemently disagreeing on something. This part had changed, but that part wasn't going to.

He had to wonder at the variables that had driven both he and Scully to take a walk today and wondered if he had God or Fate or Destiny to thank. He knew it was one of them, or perhaps all three because he didn't believe in coincidence. Scully did and they would have a good time arguing the possibilities of destiny or just dumb luck, he thought, it could keep them busy for years.

Mulder knew the chances were slight that he and Scully could ever be a so-called normal couple, living a regular and blessedly ordinary life, bickering about the kids and dogs and what color to paint the bathroom. That wasn't going to be in their future, not anytime soon anyway. They'd chosen a different path for themselves, just as they'd chosen to stay on it to the end. They'd seen too much, experienced too much and knew too much to do otherwise. Mulder had no illusions that it wouldn't be long until the amoral coterie that conspired against them discovered that he and Scully had taken this next step. What ramifications might come of that knowledge he didn't yet know, but. he did know what they were capable of and that knowledge made him uneasy. But then he remembered the promise that Scully made to him in the park.

Mulder believed in her

So, for right now, he wouldn't look more than a few hours ahead. Right now, he just wanted to commit the entirely ordinary act of sleeping with the woman he loved a bit, then make love to her a few more times in the late night and early morning. Then they'd eventually have to get up and go to work where they would have to pretend that they were still just what they'd been on Friday--partners and not lovers. That was going to be the hardest part, he knew.

But then they could come home and steal moments like this for themselves. God knows they deserved it, he thought, allowing himself a completely selfish moment. They deserved the refuge they'd found with each other. Even so, there was some tiny lingering worry that it was all some sort of cruel joke or bad dream.

"Hey Scully," he asked, shaking her gently as he could tell she was just on the verge of sleep. "Hey, you're not gonna wake up in an hour, decide this was all a mistake and leave in the middle of the night, are you?”

"Oh, Mulder I could never do that," Scully said, caressing him gently with her fingers. "After all, you've got my underwear.”

God, he loved this woman, he thought with a smile. "And I'm keeping them also," he reminded her as he reached over to switch off the lamp.

"Well, then you're keeping me too, Mulder," she murmured just she fell under the edge of sleep. " "Cause I love you," were her last conscious words.

"Yes, indeed," he whispered back the darkness as he drew the comforter up about them. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was almost midnight and Sunday was almost over.

Too bad, he thought as he curled back into Scully's arms. He rather liked Sundays.

End


End file.
